Spanish-language hockey announcer reveals he fled death threats in Mexico
One of the few radio stations to call professional hockey games in the U.S. in Spanish, his career began after fleeing death threats from a notorious drug cartel in his native Mexico, he revealed in a new interview.
In a compelling conversation with the Nevada news channel KSNV which was published Saturday, Jesus Lopez spoke about the danger he endured before becoming the play-by-play narrator of Las Vegas Golden Knights on the radio made the team’s 2023 Stanley Cup championship one of the most memorable moments of his life.
“I cried, to tell you the truth,” Lopez told the newspaper, adding that the Golden Knights gave him one of the championship rings that members of their organization received in honor of their organization’s first National Hockey League title the club. “I didn’t expect this.
“The fact that I can do this after what I have been through is very nice.”
Lopez talked about it before NHL.com that he had been living in Ocotlán, Jalisco, near the Michoacán state border and running several pizza restaurants when a regional drug cartel demanded that he pay its leaders to let him continue his business. They threatened his life and the lives of his family members if he refused, so he sold his belongings and moved to Las Vegas to start over.
“In 2011, I was forced to leave so as not to lose my life,” Lopez told KSNV.
Lopez told the NHL website that, as he understood it, La Familia Michoacana was the cartel responsible for expelling him from Mexico.
The group made headlines in December for allegedly kidnapping 14 people — including four children — in apparent retaliation for the killings of 10 La Familia Michoacana gunmen by angry farmers who banded together and took up arms over the cartel’s extortions. In 2022, ex-members of La Familia Michoacana split off and formed their own cartel killed the mayor of a city in the Mexican state of Guerrero, the politician’s father and eighteen other men.
Lopez got his gig with the Golden Knights in 2017. He is one of three broadcasters to call NHL games in Spanish – and he and the Golden Knights are the only ones on the air all season.
He told KSNV that it was initially a challenge to make a sport synonymous with Canada, the northern US and certain parts of Europe attractive to members of the Las Vegas Latino community, who love soccer, American football and boxing.
But he said he feels buoyed by the Golden Knights, who defeated the Florida Panthers at the end of the 2022-23 season to lift the Stanley Cup for the first time.
More recently, the Golden Knights visited Mexico City and Monterrey – the capital of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León – and held instructional clinics in an effort to attract even more Latino fans.
“It came at the right time because we’ve been through a lot in Mexico,” Lopez told KSNV of his career as Spanish-language radio broadcaster for the Golden Knights. With “this team… it’s always, ‘What do you need, Jesus?’ What do you need, Jesus?’ he said.
“So I like that.”