John Gurtler has been calling Bandits games for 21 years, has seen countless Bandits moments and has uttered the names of countless Bandits players.

He’s on the precipice of calling his 400th consecutive game, and he’s just a few years away from having called more games for the team than John Tavares played.

In other words, Gurtler has seen it all.

Bandits.com caught up with Gurtler to talk about his career as the Bandits’ play-by-play man, including his favorite moments in team history, his favorite players to cover and how he utilizes Banditland in his broadcasts.

Not only have you been calling Bandits games for a while, but you’ve been in the industry for a while. Do you have any pregame routines that have stuck with you throughout the years?

I generally start on Monday of the game coming up. It gives me an opportunity to review the previous game and capture some of the quotes from the pregame radio, halftime, and postgame shows that I generally use in the weekly edition of Fast Break. So, that gets me started, and then I do a complete review of the Bandits’ scoring and analysis. I’ll capture that in five-game increments to see how the guys are playing independently. Then, I’ll begin on the opponent’s roster on Tuesday. I’ll begin building the roster again and taking a look at the overall statistics and that’s how I put my cheat sheet together for my broadcasts.

It’s pretty in-depth. I try to condense it on one page for each team, with the Bandits on one page and the opponent on the next page, and have all of their pertinent statistics and information that might be of interest. For a game, it’s an 80/20 rule. You’ll use 20 percent of it and 80 percent, you won’t even touch. But you have to have it prepared in case, should the situation occur, that you’d be able to load some interesting statistics in a game that might get out of hand, might be dull, might be a blowout, something that you want to strike up a conversation on with your analyst.

You’ve called a lot of Bandits games, you’ve seen a lot of Bandits players and you’ve seen a lot of Bandits moments, but what’s been your favorite moment that you’ve called?

There have been so many of them over the course of the years that I’ve done it. This Saturday will be the 397th or 398th consecutive game that I’ve called for the Bandits. To break that up, I would say the one that sticks out of my mind would be when the Bandits finished 8-8 in 2004. It was my first year, and the Bandits beat their nemesis in the Toronto Rock in a rather packed Air Canada Centre. The Bandits beat the Rock to go on into the finals to play Calgary. That was a huge move for the Bandits, finishing 8-8 at the end of the season and then to make it all the way to the finals, only to lose to Calgary.  Certainly, winning the championship in 2008 was a highlight. The game was very exciting, coming down to a one-goal decision against a very aggressive Portland team at the time. But to manage to capture the championship in 2008, it was great.

One game in mind stands out to me when John Tavares was still playing. We were playing in Boston at the time against the Blazers. He called a specific play, I believe it was to tie the game up. Anyway, he calls a timeout, goes over to the bench along with Darris Kilgour, who was the head coach, and Tavares designed the play where he’d have control of the ball after the timeout. They started at the top of the slot, just right at the restraining line and all of the guys stayed right there with him. It was kind of like an old-fashioned football player or a rugby scrum where they just all started to play from the top of the slot, all together, all five of them, and they started to dash to the Boston net and then they broke free and I don’t know whether it was Tavares that scored the game-tying goal or if he flipped it off, but they were able just to come down as a stem and then blossom out to the rest of the players. I just thought it was a fabulous play. It always sticks in my mind. I had never seen it before, and I don’t think we’ll ever see it again. It’s just one of those mad dashes with five players running side by side together and then they break free.

Certainly, in 2016, when the Bandits went back to the finals, I thought it was a phenomenal feat for the team to do that. At that time, they played a really talented Saskatchewan team, only to fall prey to them, but I thought it was a marvelous feat for the boys to do that. That’s another high marker and then obviously the 2019 final against Calgary and then the two back-to-back championships. Obviously, you can kind of just take everything in the last two playoffs and break it up, but probably the game against Toronto last year, Game 2 of the semis. Toronto really took it to the Bandits for the time being and then for the Bandits to turn the tables and win the game and consequently, the series, I thought it was phenomenal. Players like Chase Fraser having a great goal and just all the team members jumping in and turning the thing around, that stuck out in my mind.

Who’s been the most entertaining Bandits player you’ve had the chance to watch?

Mark Steenhuis, hands down. I think he resurrected the Bandits franchise beginning in 2004 and until, unfortunately, he had to retire. He was the phoenix of the Bandits at the time to bring them back into recognition and contention and build the fan base back up. When I first started, 2004, I think our attendance was anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 a game. He helped build the reputation up again through solid play and consistently elevating the attendance throughout the years. The Bandits made it to the finals in 2004 and that got the fans to say, “Yeah, let’s go back to Bandits games,” and 2008 and then 2009, that’s when they set the attendance record at that time, I believe.

Steenhuis was great. I mean, John Tavares, just always a pleasure to watch, just a great player. The whole group, Rich Kilgour, always a solid player, whether he was facing off or on transition, or helping out on offense. Cory Bomberry with just a recognizable hard shot. I always enjoyed Cory from shooting at the top of the slot with just an incredible amount of velocity on the ball.

Over the years, I think the most impressionable player was Steenhuis. Not only the way he played the game. Just a great goal scorer, but he was an entertainer. He was the one who had the wavy red hair and fans started to get the wigs and go for the orange shoes like he wore. He was definitely a trendsetter and a marvelous personality. Funny all the time, a jokester, kept the guys loose all the time and just a hell of a lacrosse player. I remember vividly the time when I first started and he would carry his stick everywhere he went. I mean, seriously, everywhere. He always had it in his hands. I remember seeing him when I was taking a walk in Calgary on game day of the finals. He was taking a walk himself, but he had his lacrosse stick in his hands, so, just those little idiosyncrasies I thought were kind of interesting.

How is this year’s team different from other Bandits teams you’ve seen?

Without a doubt, the most talented team that I’ve been associated with. I thought it was last year. I thought it was back in 2019, 2016. I mean, over the years. This is probably the most talented team I have seen or called, or been a part of. Everybody has a sense of uncanny talent. The thing that’s so creative about this club is that everyone knows their ability. They know what they need to do and what they do well, and it’s a combination of taking all of that and saying, ‘Yeah, this is my job, I’m going to do this job, and then the other guys are going to do their job.’ And that’s what I think makes it such an interesting team from a standpoint of being so highly competitive, is that these guys are so talented at what they do.

Any of the top five, six, or seven forwards that are with the Bandits could be leading scorers for any other team, but they know their roles. As they say in the game, everybody wants the ball, but there’s only one ball, and everybody has to understand what they do and what their strengths are and nobody complains about that. I would just remember back in the day of the game when I first started, it was more of a “me” ball game where guys carried the ball a little bit further or shot the ball independently more than somebody else did. But the game today, the ball has to move so quickly that everybody has to understand their role.

I asked John Tavares this in Denver when we were doing a breakdown for the pregame show on the art of the shot. I took three players in general. One would be Tehoka Nanticoke, then the others would be Ian MacKay and Kyle Buchanan. What stood out in my mind the most was Kyle Buchanan, of how John broke down his play so perfectly and independently of all the other players, lauding Buchanan’s effort of being a really high-IQ lacrosse player. That’s kind of an overused mark, but a high-IQ lacrosse player that’s able to understand his role, do what needs to be done in terms of picking up or sealing off someone or scooping up a loose ball or getting other guys open and then getting himself open. It’s a perfect example of Buchanan. He’s got the highest shot/goal ratio. I think he’s about 25 percent now. He’s always been in the high 20s. In lacrosse, a shooting percentage like that is phenomenal. It’s just a reflection, as John had mentioned, that he doesn’t get the ball a lot because he’s doing all of his other jobs, just like all of the other players are doing. But when he finds an opportunity or a time, he’ll shoot it. A perfect example is the goal that he scored Saturday night when Dhane Smith was being double-teamed by two Halifax players and Buchanan just had the wherewithal to get himself open and to be right in front of the Halifax goaltender and to score that phenomenal goal. It was a great dish off by Dhane, but on the other hand, that’s a creative move by Kyle Buchanan, that it’s just an underlying point of just how talented these guys are and understanding what their responsibilities are and how they all take it all seriously. Nobody mopes around, there’s no selfish player among them at all, because they go ahead and do their job.

Ageless wonder! 😤

Kyle Buchanan set a new career-high in goals (34) at the age of 37. pic.twitter.com/PecDTtdDat

— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) April 13, 2025

Is there a point during the home games at which you just let the crowd do some of the talking and cue up the atmosphere of Banditland that finds a way to impact games?

Oh yeah. That’s rule number one of any good broadcaster or play-by-play man, is that you want to give at least a tendency for the viewer or listener that they can take advantage of the well-mixed sound. It takes a lot of people who are able to capture what they call sound effects in a lot of parts of the game and Buffalo probably has the best production group in the league. I mean, they do a great job mixing the game. So when I call a goal, I’ll tail off to the point where, especially on television but also on radio, you let it trail out for a while and let the fans who were watching at home or listening on the radio absorb just how exciting the arena that you’re playing in is.

I simulcast all the time with both television and radio, so you have to constantly paint the picture for radio, but on the other hand, you can let the sound write and tell the story as well, which is good. But, in television, if you’re doing a singular television game, yeah, let the crowd paint the picture and tell the story. I always thought that Joe Buck does a great job at that, especially when he covers football on television, where he’ll call the touchdown, he’ll let the fans take over the rest before the analyst comes in. We kind of have a good tenure together when I work with Steve Bermel. He knows he wants to get the fans riled up first and then he’ll come in when the replays are ready.