A case of laryngitis knocked local sportscaster and University of Maine hockey broadcaster Dan Hannigan out of the booth three words into his pregame show last Saturday night in Providence, R.I.

NEWS sportswriter Larry Mahoney, who was in the press box covering the game, agreed to fill in for Hannigan on 20 minutes notice.

“I thought he did a great job,” said Dale Duff, program director for WZON (620 AM), the Black Bear hockey program’s flagship station.

“He bailed me out. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to do the game,” said Hannigan, who still sounded hoarse early this week.

“Although broadcasting games is certainly not our primary objective, I was delighted that a member of our staff had the ability and the background to assist our media colleagues in these extraordinary circumstances,” said NEWS Sports Editor Bob Haskell.

Hannigan, who came down with a bad cold early last week, said he did not lose his voice until Friday evening.

By Saturday morning, Hannigan didn’t have much of his voice left and told Duff about it.

“I tried to track down [a broadcaster] in the Providence area but couldn’t find anyone,” said Duff.

Meanwhile, Hannigan’s voice was getting better. By 5 p.m. Saturday, he decided to give the game a shot and have Black Bears junior defenseman Jason Dekker do color commentary.

“He went on at 6:30 p.m. and three words in, nothing came out,” said Duff. “So Dan got Larry to fill in for him.”

“He looked at me and said `I can’t do it,’ ” said Mahoney. “So I called [NEWS Executive Editor] Bob Kelleter for permission.”

Mahoney, who has acquired a limited background in broadcasting, said the experience was great fun.

“I think the immediacy of the situation may have been an advantage because I didn’t have time to get nervous,” he said.

Hannigan was back at the microphone Tuesday night for the Maine-Boston University game, and his voice sounded like it was back to normal.

Brent Slowikowski is no longer the station manager at WZON.

As part of the fallout from the merger of radio stations WZON and WKIT (100.3 FM), WZON’s station manager position was eliminated.

“Administratively, there were too many people and that’s usually where you start to cut positions,” said Chris Spruce, general manager of the Zone Corporation that owns both stations.

“One of the reasons you [merge] is to gain administrative efficiency and this is part of the shakeout from the merger,” Spruce added.

Slowikowski, who has been with WZON since it became the Sports Zone in the fall of 1993, will stay on to broadcast college and high school games.

“I’m not really staying on. I’ll basically be working on a free-lance basis for them,” said Slowikowski, who was promotions and operations manager at WQCB in Brewer for 7 1/2 years before coming to WZON.

Slowikowski said he hasn’t found another job yet. He has been “approached by a couple people,” he said, and is looking into those possibilities.

Spruce said Duff will take on some of Slowikowski’s day-to-day responsibilities while Spruce will absorb the executive duties.

Maine Public Television’s weekly MaineWatch program will examine issues relating to hunting at 8 p.m. Thursday. Those issues include anti-hunting sentiment to the diminishing amount of land available to hunters.

Guests will include George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, and Bucky Owen, commissioner of the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department.