52nd birthday -His birthday.

3 -Saskatoon Blades games he overs this week.

Lazaruk is the radio voice of the Blades. Wherever they go, he follows. Although the Blades have been around since the fall of 1964 and have had a cast of play-by-play commentators, including Jack Sandberg and Peter Bell, Dennis Beyak and Roger Millions, Lazaruk is the iron man. He is as enduring as shin pads.

"When I first came here, Saskatoon was supposed to be a jumping off point," he said. That was 1994. He ploughs ahead for CJWW/Hot 93 radio. Including pre-seasons and playoffs, Lazaruk will soon do his 1,300th Blades game. On the road he stays in the same hotel as the players do, eats with them, knows and grows with them.

Although he and the team follow the same path, each has their own space.

"I tend to stay by myself a lot," said Lazaruk. "I go for a walk on my own, have a snack on my own. The team bus arrives (at the rink) two hours before a game. I like to be there three hours before so I go and do the rituals I have, getting my game face ready."

Before each game he has stats to make, notes to take. For a recent game at Credit Union Centre, he was at the rink by 4 p.m., three hours before faceoff. He didn't want to feel rushed, he said.

On a laptop, he wrote an intro to the broadcast.

He planned the radio coverage of the game, with ads here and interviews there, everything scripted but meant to feel improvised, as entertaining as an odd-man rush.

With his prep work done, Lazaruk went upstairs to a team lounge and had a plate of chicken cacciatore for supper. Then he climbed another flight of stairs and walked the catwalk to the broadcast area, getting set for the game before the teams started warmups. Lazaruk sat in his box high above centre ice, a laptop computer to his right. On a ledge in front of him were a couple of game sheets he had filled with stats.

Some notes he uses; some are there just in case -like the night he all of a sudden had 45 minutes of air time to fill. He was covering a game in Prince Albert when a transformer blew, making the rink as dark as roof tar. Lazaruk broadcast by flashlight until power returned and play resumed.

He grew up with radio. As a kid in Manitoba, he used to listen to a transistor in his bed at night, enjoying the way a smooth broadcaster made a game come alive. The crowd rocked. The place rolled. Lazaruk felt as if he was in the stands.

After high school he became a sportswriter. In his first year with the Winnipeg Tribune, Lazaruk was in Saskatoon for the paper during the summer of 1980 to cover the Canadian men's softball championship at Gordie Howe Park. In the middle of the week Les received a call from home from his father.

"Don't worry about filing for the next deadline," dad told him. The Tribune, which had been around for 90 years, just folded.

When Lazaruk returned home, a newspaper colleague, Barbara Huck, said he should try radio. A little over a month later he was on board with CKLQ, a country station in Brandon. He became its sports director. He was also given a chance to do Jets hockey games on a radio station in Winnipeg with Ken (Friar) Nicholson and Curt Keilback. He helped them cover not only Winnipeg home games, but went on the road to the Philadelphia Spectrum and Montreal Forum and Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

What he learned about radio then continues with him now.

"It's different than TV," he said.

TV provides pictures, radio a story.

"People still use their imagination," Lazaruk said. For a playby-play commentator, that means knowing when to talk and what to say, but also when to back off and say nothing, to let the crowd and atmosphere take over.

"I'm a meat and potatoes guy," said Lazaruk. By doing the playby-play of both Blades hockey and Hilltops football he brings his own special sauce to the coverage. "I've been able to bluff my way through."

Memories of players stick with him, some for their skill, others their character.

"Laird Laluk," he said, naming one. "In my second year (covering the Blades) he was a 17-year-old rookie and an absolute jokester. He was incredibly funny."

The Blades turn 50 in 2014. Lazaruk wants to cover their anniversary year. But whether it's a regular season game in October or playoffs in spring, be it home or away, he is into it.

He said when he travels with the team and sleeps in one of the passenger seats on the bus at night he snores. Or so he is told. In covering a game he sometimes stands in the broadcast booth, looking like a coach on the bench. Even when he sits, his arms move and fingers dance.

"Short of the NHL, this is the best hockey," he said on a recent night at the arena.

Down at rink level, the warmup has ended. Two Zambonis hit the ice. In the broadcast booth Lazaruk was in a dress shirt and tie. He wore a radio headset fitted with a microphone. He picked up a full Pepsi cup on the ledge in front of him and had a drink through a straw. Faceoff was moments away. It was game time.