Asking Tom Caron if he prefers calling baseball games to hockey games is akin to comparing apples and oranges. Or asking Caron to name his favorite child – he has two.

Caron chooses a diplomatic answer.

"I like hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer," said Caron, a Lewiston native in his 14th year as a broadcaster with NESN. "I did the (Portland) Pirates for a while and the Bruins for a while, and I got out of hockey because the Red Sox became such a big part of the culture here in Boston, a year-round thing."

But this year, Caron has been going back to his hockey roots. Caron and Craig Janney, a former Boston College and Boston Bruins star, will call the action tonight when NESN broadcasts the Maine-New Hampshire game at the Whittemore Center in Durham, N.H.

Caron is one of several people with Maine connections involved with NESN's weekly Hockey East games. Former UMaine players Bob Beers and Brendan Walsh are studio analysts.

"College hockey is so much more accessible to the fans," said Caron, who does play-by-play. "You can still go to a place like Alfond Arena or the Whittemore Center, and it's still that old New England hockey barn.

"Growing up in Lewiston, you either went to high school or semipro games on the weekends. The professional game is neat, but there's still something special about a packed house on a Friday night, whether it's in Orono or in Potsdam, N.Y."

Walsh, who played at Maine from 1998-2000 and is now a police officer in Boston, is in his second year of doing studio commentary on NESN. Walsh teams with Beers, who played at Maine from 1986-89.

"I think it's very exciting to be doing this, especially with the pace at NESN," said Walsh. "From the outside looking in, I'm learning things. I'm learning something every week. To work with guys like Tom Caron, it's incredible. I'm shocked because I look at how seamless he is, but he gets all his information in the course of the game. Bob Beers has showed me a ton of different ways to look at yourself, watching what you do on tape."

Staff Writer Rachel Lenzi can be reached at 791-6415 or at:

rlenzi@pressherald.com