Kallie Cullison makes history in Silvertips booth

Published 8:30 am Thursday, February 26, 2026

EVERETT — Kallie Cullison is terrified.

Standing in the broadcast booth atop Angel of the Winds Arena, minutes before the Everett Silvertips’ 7:05 p.m. puck drop against the Kamloops Blazers on Feb. 6, Cullison is about to make history. As soon as the radio broadcast goes live, the 21-year-old digital media assistant will become the first female to provide color commentary on a Silvertips radio broadcast in the franchise’s 23-year history.

The magnitude of the moment would be enough to spike the nerves of a seasoned broadcaster, but this will be Cullison’s first time on the headset in any capacity. Not for a small-town school team with fewer listeners than players on the ice, but for the best team in the Western Hockey League, available to listen across the region on KRKO Radio and streaming across the United States on Victory+.

So no, ’terrified’ is not an exaggeration.

“It was one of the scariest experiences of my life,” Cullison told The Herald on Feb. 22, just over two weeks later. “I couldn’t tell you what was going through my head.”

Despite getting thrown in the deep end of hockey broadcasting, it isn’t as if Cullison has no clue how to swim. In her second season working for the team, Cullison knows the roster inside and out. On top of that baseline knowledge, months of preparation led up to this moment, all the way to the final minutes before puck drop. She practiced the opening segment with Silvertips play-by-play voice Casey Bryant, who is trying his best to help his “evidently nervous” broadcast partner settle in by working in casual conversation about the NHL and Cullison’s family.

After all, that’s where her journey to this moment started. With how often she attended Silvertips games with her father, Chris, and brother, Derek, growing up, Angel of the Winds Arena was practically Cullison’s second home. Except in this moment, it could not feel more foreign.

Following the anthems, it’s go time. Cullison knows the players. She knows the game. All that’s left is to call it.

Fork in the Road

Although Cullison grew up attending Silvertips games from around the age of six, she never expected to end up in the broadcaster’s booth. In fact, she originally never expected to step into the arena by choice. In the early days, Silvertips games felt more like a chore.

“I honestly didn’t like hockey at first,” Cullison said. “Because it was mainly a thing for them (Chris and Derek), and I was just like, ‘I’m not a fan of it.’”

She doesn’t remember exactly when — or why — but sometime around the age of 12 or 13, a switch flipped. It took going to games for half her life at that point to realize that she actually did like hockey. She dove into the statistical side of the game, so much so that she eventually felt a desire to pursue some kind of career in the sport.

However, at that point, when Cullison was 18, she was already on a nursing path. After completing the nursing assistant program at Sno-Isle TECH in Everett while still in high school, she enrolled at Everett Community College to pick up prerequisites for nursing school. One day, her mother, Krystal, intervened.

“My mom sat me down and was like, ‘What do you actually want to do?’” Cullison said. “And I was like, ‘Well, my dream job is to work in the NHL.’ She was like, ‘So do it.’ And I was like, ‘I’ll try.’”

With the support of her parents, Cullison started to pursue her passion.

Working for Tips

After fostering her love for hockey at Silvertips games, starting her career with the organization seemed like the natural first step. However, Cullison did not receive an internship position her first time applying ahead of the 2023-24 season.

Instead, she enrolled in journalism classes, a photography course and picked up a couple of media-related jobs on the side in order to equip her with some of the tools to get her off the ground. With her family still season-ticket holders, Cullison went to nearly every Silvertips game, trying to pick up as much as she could through conversations with her father and research into the systems of the game. By the time she applied for the internship again the following season, Cullison’s media experience and knowledge had grown significantly, and she earned a spot on the staff for the 2024-25 season.

With the Silvertips, Cullison rotates with the rest of the digital media staff — comprised of Laney Agodon, Beth Huston, Stella Rockwell and Lindsey McClellan this season — wearing a variety of hats. Some nights, it’s a videography role, other times she’s controlling the team’s X account and live-posting game updates. A big component is creating content for Instagram and TikTok, often roping in the players to participate in videos during practices. Everything short of riding an ATV around the ice as the Silvertips’ mascot, Lincoln, during the pregame hype festivities, she has done at some point.

Broadcasting was never part of the job description, but Bryant planted that seed on Cullison’s first day with the team. Impressed by her “natural charisma,” Bryant felt she would excel in an on-air role if given the opportunity.

“I kind of floated that idea of, ‘Hey, I think that you’d be good at this,’” Bryant told The Herald. “It wasn’t something that she expressed, but it was one of the first conversations we ever had, where I could just tell that she had an ‘it’ factor when it came to that kind of thing.”

Immediately, Cullison knew how she felt about that idea.

“I was like, ‘Nope, not a day in my life,’” Cullison said. “‘I will never be on the broadcast. You will never see me on camera.’ I wasn’t a fan of it at first.”

Bryant respected that and backed off, at least for a little bit. He continued to plant seeds, and after Cullison grew more comfortable in her various roles throughout the season, Bryant asked that summer if she would have interest doing occasional on-camera player interviews during the following season. By then, Cullison warmed up to it and agreed to give it a shot, but she still had no interest in color commentary. Bryant was not done pushing quite yet.

Becoming a Broadcaster

As much as Bryant wanted to see Cullison give it a shot in the booth, he wanted to go about it in a way where she wouldn’t hate it right away. Starting with conducting player interviews during training camp, Cullison gradually built up experience in front of the camera with a microphone. Those player interviews became longer, and she eventually worked up to producing stand-up packages, speaking alone in front of the camera for minute-long segments. It got to the point where she was writing her own scripts and producing the entire package on her own.

Following months of Cullison building a base, Bryant decided she was ready to jump on the call. With National Women in Sports Day approaching in early February, that weekend felt like the perfect time for Cullison to become the first woman on a Silvertips broadcast.

“We could have waited a couple weeks after the Alberta swing (from Feb. 10-16), but let’s get it done now because I think that would make good timing for her, important timing for her,” Bryant said. “So I’m so glad that she was prepped and ready for that with a couple weeks notice.”

Bryant set the date for Everett’s game against Kamloops on Feb. 6, and despite expressing doubt throughout the process leading up to it, she finally agreed.

With only a couple of weeks to prepare for her first-ever broadcast, Cullison received every game note and spot chart Bryant had, as well as the WHL’s stat pack to learn exactly what he worked with for every game. In the days leading up to the game, the two sat in front of a monitor to simulate a broadcast of a Silvertips-Blazers game from earlier in the season. As much as it set the stage for the dynamic, it was impossible to replicate the experience.

“It was rough because you’re lacking the energy, the urgency and the fear of, ‘Hey, I have to keep talking,’” Bryant said. “We can just stop and we can chat (calling off the monitor), and we can ask questions. And it’s hard, because you don’t have the stress of a live performance.”

Cullison’s preparation went through the night before the game, where she stayed up late with Chris to go over her notes.

“We stayed up pretty late, actually, the night before because I was convinced I wasn’t prepared enough,” Cullison said. “But we were just going over everything. He was helping me make spreadsheets.”

Finally, it was game day. All the preparation had come down to this.

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Breaking the Glass Ceiling

The fear got to Cullison early on. She had to fight through the instinct to clam up throughout the first period. Despite believing she had underprepared, she soon discovered she put together so many notes that it became too many pages to flip through. Self-doubt and nerves crept in. She became over-critical of herself, believing she had no clue what she was talking about.

When Kamloops scored just 4:02 into the game, 10 seconds of silence passed after Bryant finished the goal call before he jumped back in to pick things up.

“It’ll be Tommy Lafreniere getting the assist, and I tell ya, that continues what has been a tremendous string here for Tommy Lafreniere,” Bryant said on the broadcast. “Primary helper, and since the turn of the year, Kallie, Lafreniere has been particularly good.”

“Yeah,” Cullison responded. “He has 14 points in his past 14 games since New Year’s Day.”

“That top line clicking,” Bryant chimed in.

It was a slow start, but Cullison grew into the role in real time. Once it reached the midway point of the second period, she started to feel more comfortable. It certainly helped that both Chris and Krystal were able to come by the booth and watch her in action for part of it.

“There was a few mistakes, there was a few things— a few moments that (Bryant) would be like, ‘Here’s something to say,’ and I would just be like, no words,” Cullison told The Herald. “(…) I think (my parents’ presence) helped me a lot, just because the comfort of having them there.”

By the third period, Cullison was fully in her element. When Lukas Kaplan scored what would be the winning goal at 11:37 of the third period, she immediately jumped in to analyze Nolan Chastko’s role in setting up the play, which led to an insightful exchange about how Chastko’s experience slotting in as a defenseman for part of the season has led to an improvement in his play at forward, his natural position.

As the Silvertips completed their comeback from down 3-1 into a 6-3 victory, Cullison and Bryant riffed on the rarity of a bar down, empty-net goal, which Tarin Smith scored to make it 5-3 at 18:07, before Carter Bear sealed off a hat trick with another empty-netter at 18:56. The duo displayed the chemistry of broadcast partners that had called games together for two seasons, not two hours.

The feelings of fear turned into fun, and those thoughts of self-doubt dispersed when she realized she had what it took to hold her weight on a hockey broadcast.

“I think after, I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, why did you ever think that?’” Cullison said. “‘You’ve been watching this game your whole life.’ So that was kind of a realization for me. … It was really cool, and I honestly enjoyed doing it more than I thought I would.”

So much so, that she hopped on the call again a couple of weeks later.

The Future

In the first game back from Everett’s five-game road trip through Alberta, Cullison returned to the booth. Facing the Seattle Thunderbirds on Feb. 21, the Silvertips picked up a decisive 9-0 victory, with Bear recording yet another hat trick. According to Bryant, she picked up right where she left off from the third period of her debut.

“By the end of the (first) game, she’s cracking jokes and she’s keeping loose,” Bryant said. “The end of the third period in game one was how she started the first period in game two, to where she, again, is bouncing off of me and she’s finding the right points to talk about. She doesn’t have to scramble through her notes. She kind of had her own organizational system set. … By the end of period six of her doing it, she was already leaps and bounds ahead of where she was period one.

“The thing about (Cullison) is she learns so quickly, and that’s all because of her drive and her work ethic. So I think it’s awesome that she’s able to see such clear progress in such a concise amount of time.”

More than anything, Cullison was excited to make her parents proud, and honored to be a trailblazer for the Silvertips organization. Her overall goals have not changed: She wants to work in hockey. Except now, she sees opportunities ahead of her that go beyond social media, whether that is in broadcasting or elsewhere.

She knows she has a lot more to learn on the headset. It took the 30-year-old Bryant, now five seasons in WHL, over 10 years to reach this point. Cullison got that opportunity at just 21. After being resistant for so long, she’s approaching the future with an open mind, eager to take on any opportunities that may come down the line.

“I can only say ‘thank you’ to (Bryant),” Cullison said. “All of the credit goes to him. He got me where I am. …

“It’s an insane honor, and I’m so grateful for this experience.”