NBC broadcaster Mike Emrick poses for a photo while preparing to call Game 2 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Final between the St. Louis Blues and the Bruins in Boston on May 29, 2019. (AP file photo)

That’s also how “Doc” wants to experience a documentary about his life and career.

NBC will air “Doc Emrick — The Voice of Hockey” Sunday afternoon after a second NHL outdoor game at Lake Tahoe. The program will feature more than a dozen current and former broadcasters sharing their thoughts on the now-retired play-by-play broadcaster. Emrick did interviews for the special but asked the network not to tell him anything in advance, so he can enjoy it like a gift.

“It’s like a present,” Emrick said Tuesday from his Michigan home. “They’re doing a really nice thing for me, and I would rather not ask a lot of questions about, well, what are you getting me for Christmas?”

NBC Sports got Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Martin Brodeur, T.J. Oshie and many others to weigh in on Emrick, who was the voice of the the sport in the United States before putting down the headset this past fall. Crosby says Emrick was a legend when they first met in 2005 and that “he describes exactly what you’re feeling in that moment as a player.”

Mike Emrick speaks after being inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Chicago on Dec. 12, 2011. (AP file photo)

Emrick doesn’t know how he’ll feel when he and his wife, Joyce, sit down to watch the special Sunday. He knows only what he has seen on promos and what producer Vinny Costello showed him while interviewing him at the McMorran Place theater in Port Huron.

Asked why he wanted to be kept in the dark on the story about him, Emrick naturally has a comparison from his career. Talking to George Armstrong many years ago in Toronto, Emrick asked the 1967 Cup-winning Maple Leafs captain if he’d ever been to the Hockey Hall of Fame and was told no, because he wouldn’t want someone to walk in and see him looking at himself.

Among his many broadcasts, Emrick was the play-by-play broadcaster when Hockeyville came to Marquette on Oct. 4, 2016, with the Carolina Hurricanes facing the Buffalo Sabres in an NHL preseason game at Lakeview Arena.