Longtime Bruins announcer Jack Edwards makes a surprising announcement

This just in, longtime Boston Bruins play by play man Jack Edwards has announced his retirement from professional broadcasting at 67 years old. He'll officially retire at the end of this season.

“I grew up a Bruins fan, and who had more fun than us over the last two decades?” said  Edwards in a prepared statement on NHL.com. “In collaboration with Bruins and NESN leadership, I recently decided that the time has come for me to finish my shift as the voice of the Boston Bruins. I am no longer able to attain the standards I set for myself, to honor the fans, the players, the Bruins organization and NESN with the best they all deserve.”

Edwards has been the Bruins' play by play broadcaster on NESN since 2005 and is seen as one of the best to ever call the sport, but in the past couple seasons his game has slipped. Earlier this year, Edwards announced that a mystery illness has kept him from putting out his best efforts and now, it appears, that he has accepted it's time to hang up his microphone.

“I did not have some kind of accident,” he said to Boston.com just a month ago. “I do not have cancer. I don’t have dementia. I haven’t had a stroke. All of that’s been confirmed by Mass. General neurology."

“They’ve done tests that seem like I’m going through some sort of science-fiction scene, but it’s really true. The images of my brain literally reveal nothing. That’s my joke with them.”

“It doesn’t fit in any slot,” he says. “There have been a couple of guesses, but they haven’t made a definitive diagnosis and they’ve been working on me for a year and a half. It’s very frustrating, as you can imagine, for me to have this slowdown in my speech.”

Despite saying in February that he had no intentions to retire early due to his health problems, Edwards had a change of heart in discussing things with his employer.

“I retire from broadcasting not with a heavy heart, but gratefulness for a 19-year-long joyride,” Edwards said earlier today. “I owe my career, my own pursuit of happiness, to the love and support of my family. I thank every member of the Bruins and NESN for your loyalty, helping me to achieve and live out a lifetime goal, high above the ice.”

I've been pretty critical of Edwards over the years due to his over the top, homer-loving calls for the Bruins, but I hate to see a man taken away from the thing that he loves due to an illness. Edwards may not have been my personal cup of tea, but there are thousands of Bruins fans who love him and he loved them right back. I sincerely hope that Jack can get to the bottom of whatever it is that has cost him his livelihood and that he can look forward to a long and fruitful retirement following a very stellar career.