Stan Fischler, whom some have called The Hockey Man, has been covering the ice game longer and more actively than any living journalist. He began working professionally as a hockey journalist in 1954 and is a Lester Patrick Award-winner "for contributions to hockey in the United States." Currently appearing on MSG Networks Hockey Night Live weekly program, he made his television debut as an announcer working in Boston and covering the World Hockey Association’s New England Whalers in 1973. His NHL debut took place two years later, when he began a long association with the New York Islanders doing telecasts. Fischler still does Islanders telecasts for the Madison Square Garden Networks, and he has no less than seven Emmy Awards to his credit, also winning a writing award for his work on Subway Series, which was carried on MSG's Metro Channel. He wrote his first of more than 90 hockey books in 1968, an autobiography of Hall of Famer Gordie Howe. Fischler has "ghosted" autobiographies for such notables as Brad Park, Don Cherry, and Derek Sanderson. His Bobby Orr and the Big, Bad Bruins was a bestseller, as was Hammer, the autobiographer of Philadelphia Flyers tough guy Dave Schultz. Before his wife, Shirley, died in May 2014, she collaborated with her husband on two definitive hockey encyclopedias, as well as other NHL books. He is a Brooklyn native.