Shannon Hogan is the host and reporter on New York Islanders telecasts for MSG Networks, a job she has held since the 2014-15 season. Shannon Hogan came to hockey without having played it: she was a competitive swimmer at two universities and spent four years covering Detroit sport before New York. She works alongside play-by-play announcer Brendan Burke and analysts Thomas Hickey and Butch Goring.
| Fast facts: Shannon Hogan | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Hosting Islanders pregame, intermission and postgame coverage |
| Current role | Host and reporter, New York Islanders telecasts |
| Employer | MSG Networks |
| Hometown | Northville, Michigan. She was born in upstate New York, near Syracuse |
| Education | University of Missouri, broadcast journalism, after transferring from the University of Virginia |
| Previous roles | Four years at FOX Sports Detroit, and a first job in the Salinas market in California covering sport and news |
| Hockey connection | None as a player. She was a college swimmer |
How long has Shannon Hogan been with the Islanders?
Since the 2014-15 season. MSG replaced Peter Ruttgaizer with her in August 2014, and 2025-26 was her 12th season in the role.
The channels and streams for Islanders games are in our guide to how to watch the New York Islanders.
What is Shannon Hogan’s career?
| Year | Role | Outlet |
|---|---|---|
| 2005-06 | Swimmer, sprint freestyle and backstroke, junior year | University of Missouri |
| After college | Sports and news reporter | Salinas market, California |
| 2010 | Reporter, Red Wings, Tigers, Pistons and college hockey | FOX Sports Detroit |
| 2014 | Host and reporter, Islanders telecasts | MSG Networks |
| 2018-19 | Host on the first NHL broadcast team with three women in prominent on-air roles | MSG Networks |
| 2020 | Host of playoff bubble coverage from New York | MSG Networks |
Her first job was in a market she had no connection to, and she drove across the country to it with her mother. Before New York, she covered the 2010 US Open and the 2010 and 2012 World Series, and she has covered the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2011.
Who did Shannon Hogan replace?
Peter Ruttgaizer, who had held the Islanders hosting job before her. The only woman to have hosted the club’s telecasts before her, on the season-by-season broadcaster record, is Deb Placey, who had the job through the 2000s.
The first woman to work as an in-booth analyst in NHL playoff history was A.J. Mleczko, in 2018, and the first all-female produced and broadcast NHL game was an NBC game in March 2020, not an Islanders telecast. What is documented in Hogan’s name is that since 2018-19, three of the five on-air voices on Islanders broadcasts have been women: Hogan as host, with Mleczko and Jennifer Botterill alternating as analysts. The Hockey Writers called that a first for a professional sports team.
Did Shannon Hogan play a sport?
Swimming, at two universities. She swam at the University of Virginia on a scholarship and then transferred to Missouri to study journalism, where her roster entry lists her as a sprint freestyle and backstroke swimmer from Northville, Michigan. In February 2006, she was named to the Academic All-Big 12 first team.
That distinction is worth keeping straight. Her employer’s biography and her speaking bio both say she earned All-Big 12 honors, but the documented honor is the academic one. She has never played hockey.
What is Shannon Hogan best known for?
Two things, and the first one is a joke she has never been allowed to live down. In her first Islanders season, on 29 December 2014, she opened an intermission interview with “I’m here joined by, uh, what’s your name again?” and then added “Anders Lee, I’m just joking,” as CBS Sports recorded the next day. She had been covering him since his college days at Notre Dame, and said afterward that she had interviewed him more than anyone else on the team.
The second is more substantial. She has hosted the broadcast through the seasons in which the Islanders have had three women in prominent on-air roles, and she has been direct about what that is for.
“The other important thing is that women have to help other women. I mean, we have to be each other’s champion. Just because there’s one woman on a broadcast, doesn’t mean there can’t be another,” Shannon Hogan told WNYC’s The Takeaway in April 2019, in an interview The Hockey Writers quoted the following year.
Has Shannon Hogan won an Emmy?
A regional one, and a nomination on top of it. Her employer’s biography credits her with a 2014 Michigan Emmy Award in the sports anchor category, which she won for her work in Detroit before moving to New York. In July 2024, The Hockey News reported that she was nominated for a New York Emmy alongside Burke and Hickey.
Where is Shannon Hogan from?
Northville, Michigan, where she grew up, though she was born in upstate New York near Syracuse. Her family moved repeatedly for her father’s work in sales, through Connecticut, Atlanta, and Tulsa before Michigan, which is how a New Yorker by birth ended up covering Detroit sports for four years and then moving back east.
Her first live hockey game was at Joe Louis Arena in 2000, and she has said she wanted to be a journalist since she was eight.
How old is Shannon Hogan?
She was born in March, 1986.
Who is Shannon Hogan’s husband?
His name is Brendan, and the source is her employer: MSG Networks’ own page states that she is married to Brendan and has a daughter.
One confusion is worth heading off. Her husband Brendan and the Islanders play-by-play announcer Brendan Burke are two different people, and nothing connects them beyond a first name.
Read more:
