The_Admiral

3 minutes ago, MC Buffalo said:

It's fun when the season first starts, it's a nice signal that Spring and Summer are coming, but 162 games is just too much.

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I'd bring the lettering in a little bit so that the C is where the stick blade would reasonably end.

I wonder if this would work in midnight blue and neon green.

2 hours ago, NicDB said:

people are still shocked to learn our mayor at the height of the red scare was a socialist.

Does this guy know how to party or what?

Surely would have preempted the Sharks' uniforms, but in a vacuum, I dig!

Needs a little splash of red or blue.

6 hours ago, charger77 said:

Tyler Seguin re-signs with Dallas 8 years $78.8 million

He's compiling money as well as he compiles empty stats.

6 hours ago, kimball said:

AAA: Go traditional, you can get a little original but Storm Chasers or Baby Cakes should not be allowed in AAA. Names related to the parent club are cool, but no Iowa Cubs or Omaha Royals please.

I mostly agree, but allow for a handful of parent names here (same with the AHL). I like every Braves affiliate being the Braves, for instance, and I don't mind the Iowa Cubs, but "Oklahoma City Dodgers" clangs to me in a way those don't. But yes, no Storm Chasers, Baby Cakes, or Iron Pigs. RIP the greatest AAA name, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons.

EDIT: in checking the page for the International League, I was reminded that the Norfolk Tides updated, and my god are they ever hideous.

I don't think the number came up in our discussion of it last month, but I see now that the Hurricanes offered Chuck Kaiton an 80% pay cut to stay on. I don't know for sure what NHL radio broadcasters make, but I can't imagine it's enough to where one-fifth of it is enough to live comfortably on. Chicago Wolves broadcasters are probably making well over 20% of what low-end NHL broadcasters make. What a crass decision, imagine what terrible public relations this would be for the league if anyone cared.

1 hour ago, Kaz said:

In addition to Beadle leaving, Jemele Hill will be bought out of her contract at ESPN

And that's why you never tell your audience to boycott your own sponsors. But she's extremely talented, she'll land at a good writing gig.

On 8/23/2018 at 3:03 PM, Gothamite said:

"Supper Clubbers" and "Old Fashioneds" are about as Wisconsin as you can get.  But they're surprisingly adult for minor-league ball, which leans toward the kiddie.

I can get down with Supper Clubbers, but why would anyone want to be on a team that's a homophone for "worst"?

ESPN needs to see its daytime programming as again being the media backwater it was for the first 20-25 years and fill those hours as cheaply as possible. A whole morning of SportsCenter isn't necessary anymore, but at least you can do it on a shoestring budget. They're paying vanilla-soft-serve-in-a-safety-cone Mike Greenberg like $6,500,000 and renting studio space in Manhattan for a show that no wants wants to watch, one host doesn't want to do, and is just as redundant to the sports media landscape as the boom-goes-the-dynamite stuff they keep trying to replace. This is going to end with Mike Greenberg getting promoted to an all-new ninth hour of Good Morning America and Jalen Rose listening to Bill Simmons talk about the time his buddy Mohawk Charlie tried to make a snow angel in a semester's worth of discarded beer cans, all while blinking SOS in Morse code.

Show's also being cut by an hour to do more SportsCenter and less Cold Pizza 2: Colder Pizza. It's probably all back to SportsCenter by Christmas, right?

1 hour ago, dfwabel said:

Beadle leaving "Get Up!", moving back to L.A. and will return to NBA Countdown.

 

https://thebiglead.com/2018/08/24/michelle-beadle-get-up-maria-taylor-mina-kimes/

 

Her, "I don't watch the NFL or college on Saturdays", this week had to play a role.

Good for her for sticking to her principles regarding a league that has no regard for human life -- in the bad way, not the Kevin Harlan calling a dunk way -- but if you've had that sinking feeling that the members of your media do not want to speak to you so much as they want to speak to themselves, well, it's probably sinking a little more, isn't it?

41 minutes ago, MadmanLA said:

I think putting the Blackhawks on the WGN Superstation/America feed would have helped in that regard a little; I understand NBCSN/Versus wanting to protect its exclusive cable rights, but it would have helped (especially with the team's resurgence as a league power again) build-up the NHL's popularity, even if it was the Blackhawks Game of the Week.

It's funny: because of a loophole in CRTC regulations, Canadian cable systems can't carry (x5!) WGN America, but can carry the regular channel 9 that we get in Chicago, so weekly Blackhawks games were nationally televised. In Canada.

From your first sentence I was worried that it would be like the stock tickers where they're both scrolling but at different speeds.

Compare these press releases about NBC(SN) pickups for some world-class Perding. We're all used to Pierre McGuire masturbating over teams, but this is the first documented instance of a team masturbating all over Pierre McGuire.

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In conjunction with the National Hockey League and NBC Sports, the Chicago Blackhawks today announced their 2018-19 regular-season national television schedule. Nationally, the Blackhawks will appear exclusively on NBC (including NBC and NBCSN) 11 times.

 

Additionally, the Blackhawks will appear in eight non-exclusive nationally televised games, totaling a league-high 19 national appearances. The Blackhawks' first nationally televised game is scheduled for Wednesday, November 14 vs. St. Louis at 7:00 p.m. on NBCSN.

Additionally, the game time for the Tuesday, November 27 game vs. Vegas changed to a 7:00 p.m. start and the Thursday, January 3 game at New York Islanders changed to a 6:30 p.m. start. The full schedule of nationally televised games for the 2018-19 season is below. The local television schedule will be announced at a later date in conjunction with the Blackhawks' exclusive rightsholders, NBC Sports Chicago and WGN-TV.

 

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After seeing a record nine games on national television last season, the Predators have obliterated the number once more and are set to appear on the networks of NBC for 12 games in 2018-19. 

Nashville will play one game on NBC and 11 more on NBCSN, the maximum combined number of exclusive games allowed for one team across this single season.

The appearances begin right away on Oct. 4 as the Predators visit the New York Rangers on NBCSN in the first game of the season for both clubs. Nashville then appears two more times before the month of October concludes, hosting San Jose on the 23rd and Vegas one day before Halloween.

...

With the national spotlight being cast on Smashville more than ever before, fans attending those games at Bridgestone Arena will once more help to create the atmosphere that has now become famous around the hockey world as the best in the NHL.

"With the impressive growth of fan interest in non-traditional NHL markets combined with the emergence of a number of rising stars, we felt the time was right to broaden our Wednesday night schedule and evolve the brand," Executive Producer & President, Production, NBC Sports and NBCSN Sam Flood said via press release. "Fans will still see plenty of games between traditional powers, but our new approach to Wednesday nights - including a record number of doubleheaders - allows us to show more rising stars and more Western Conference and Canadian teams than ever before."

Rising stars on Western Conference teams? Say no more. It's clear why the Preds will see 12 games on the national docket this season.

37 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

I feel like it's easier to watch professional wrestling on television than it is professional hockey. And given that Fox is going to give WWE $2 billion to broadcast Smackdown on Fox next year, it seems like it's more valuable too.

Of course, professional wrestling was on the vanguard of providing cheap television content. It's had an eye toward televised spectacle since Gorgeous George. Meanwhile, hockey teams went well into the '90s fearing that home games on TV would stop people from coming out to buy beer. That has more to do with not televising well than a puck being too small. Football would suck on TV too if the owners didn't want to optimize it.

On 8/15/2018 at 9:14 AM, Hat Boy said:

I thought part of the issue is that NBC doesn't get "credit" for the ratings in Canadian TV markets when they sell to advertisers.  Even if 100% of Toronto televisions are tuned into Wings/Leafs, NBC can only charge advertisers based on the stateside audience.

Right, NBC doesn't have Canadian TV markets, it just has American markets (Seattle, Fargo, Detroit, Buffalo, Plattsburgh) that can be picked up over the air or by Canadian cable operators, but on cable those would have to be blacked out if a Canadian-origination channel, whether the CBC or a cable channel, also has the Leafs game, and why wouldn't they.

I'm just arguing -- or more accurately, lamenting -- that we ought to have a state of the league where Toronto fans are not limited to the Toronto market, ibid for Montreal, due to the prestige of those organizations. By rights, the Leafs should be like the Cubs (they sure got the lasting-incompetence part down) where you'll find their fans anywhere you go. It's too bad they lacked the foresight or the ability to do something in the '80s and '90s like a syndication package of Leafs games for programming-starved UHF stations around America.

But if you look back, hockey teams back then weren't even good at telecasting their entire schedules in their own backyards. (EDIT: the Islanders, of all teams, are a rare exception, as the excerpt alludes to; they signed a big honkin' TV deal with SportsChannel, later FSN New York, now MSG+, that has kept the team afloat to this day.) From a 1995 Courant:

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SportsChannel New England, which carries 49 Whalers games, was contracted to do the Celtics-Bulls game Monday at the FleetCenter. SportsChannel airs all Celtics home games.

WFSB, Channel 3, which airs five home games and eight games in all, did not want to replace its strong Monday lineup.

``Mondays were a 100 percent no,'' WFSB vice president and general manager Chris Rohrs said. ``The other days we could look at on a case-by-case basis.''

Instead of Brendan Shanahan, you saw ``The Nanny.'' Instead of Pierre Turgeon, you got ``Murphy Brown.''

``Television, like everything else, is a supply-demand issue and there are economic considerations,'' said Russ Gregory, Whalers senior vice president of marketing and public relations. ``We had two options, SportsChannel or [Channel] 3. Neither of them had it available to squeeze into their programming or justify it from an economic standpoint.''

Whalers fans have it much tougher than other NHL fans. All Rangers, Bruins and Islanders games are televised live. The Devils, counting national telecasts, will have 78 of 82 on TV.

There are 24 Whalers games that aren't on TV, not counting games against the Bruins that may be blacked out on WSBK, Channel 38, in the Hartford area. Although 10 teams in the NHL have fewer games on TV, including Chicago and Washington, according to the Hockey News, the Whalers make only about $3 million to $4 million from television rights.

42% of the league kept at least 30% of the schedule off TV and this was 1995-1996, which doesn't feel like ancient history. I'm kinda losing the plot here so to bring it back, the NHL has been lacking a vision for television for years now and that as much as anything has set them back.

I know I can't talk about the p-word, but because liberals have failed and then been failed by their government by letting thousands of elections go the wrong way, the only real hope for justice is through a loose shadow government of industries where liberals reign: entertainment, media, advertising. We can't trust judges, but we can trust Adam Silver. Maybe.

It's case-by-case. Slava Voynov should be out of the league for good given the enormity of what he did. And if the case against Patrick Kane hadn't been fabricated to shake him down (sorry to the rape truthers hanging in there), he'd probably be in prison right now. I don't really need Watson in the league at all costs nor do I need him out at all costs, but I'm not the loudly performative male feminist here, Lambert is.

You know, I saw Rocky Wirtz at an IceHogs game last year. He is by far the NHL's most rectangle-shaped owner. I can never decide whether his clumsy, desultory attempts at crying poor are infuriating or just endearingly pathetic. It says a lot about his dad and his peers that the scion of a crooked liquor-distribution concern is easily among the NHL's least evil and incompetent owners.

Anyway, here's Ryan Lambert getting torn between sucking off David Poile and New South NHL teams (they're the opposite of Canadian teams, which are Actually Bad) and supporting victims of convicted abusers:

 

1. The Predators cap situation again somehow

How much money do you think Ryan Ellis left on the table here? I’m gonna say at least $1.5 million a season against the cap. And the fact that he got no trade protection and only $7 million in bonus money? And that’s after he already played with a huge hometown discount contract (a $2.5 million AAV? c’mon man) for FIVE years.

That’s truly incredible to me. But it shows the amount of buy-in this group has, and how much signing one or two good deals for non-stars trickles down to everyone in the lineup.

Obviously they still have to re-sign Roman Josi and that’s a guy who could get expensive, but if you pay him about the same amount of money for about the same number of years as Ellis, you have an entire top four of Subban, Josi, Ekholm, and Ellis signed for the next four seasons at a combined cap hit that looks like this:

$19.25 million for 2018-19

$23 million for 2019-20

$25.5 million for both 2020-21 and 2021-22

Those last two are assuming Josi signs for $6.5 million. Which I guess sounds about right but might be a little high given his age when his new deal starts. Anything in that range, though, would be a steal.

I don’t know how they keep doing it but they are. Pretty amazing.

(Not ranked this week: Forgetting about the other more important stuff.

Of course, I can’t fully support the Preds at this time because Austin Watson is still allowed to be part of the team even though you should be able to easily boot a guy for pleading no contest on charges of beating up his wife. Any mention of “Ah the Preds did a good thing,” it’s also important to say, “And also the Austin Watson thing majorly sucks.”

I know dumbasses are gonna say “stick to sports” or “it’s not relevant when talking about other stuff with the club, but if they cut a single paycheck to Watson this season, it should be a mega mega mega scandal that gets talked about all year.

For as good as they are on the ice, and all the good management they’ve done building this roster, there’s no defending the kinds of things David Poile has done with respect to Watson and Mike Ribeiro. It’s really gross. You hate to root for a team this good to fail, but here we are.)

What an amazing organization! (Footnote: oops didn't mean to)

How do you lose $50 million in one year? Even Unkle Adams hasn't lost that much money.

I like Paul Lukas's work, but he's a veritable shipping container full of idiosyncrasies and you have to tweak someone like that.

Anyhoo, over in hockeyland, the Wednesday Night Rivalry concept is dead and NBC now wants to commit to showcasing star players. I'm fine with this, but you can have it both ways if you're doing it right: what's Connor McDavid versus Johnny Hockey to some can be The Battle of Alberta to others. I think showcasing NHL rivalries is good in theory, but it kind of breaks down when half the "rivalries" have to involve the Penguins, the other half aren't real because of too many expansions, relocations, and realignments, and all of them are watered down by the league's counterproductive reinforcement of the belief that its regular season is irrelevant. 

I don't really care about a move to star-based presentations because I don't trust the NHL to commit to it anyway. It's like getting a dog to walk on its hind legs. The real value of this is that it smuggles Canadian teams into national American telecasts. One of the games is going to be Auston Matthews versus Patrik Laine, which is code for Toronto versus Winnipeg! As I've pointed out in the past, one of the NHL's bigger problems stateside is that its two flagship teams, the Maple Leafs and the 24-time world champion Canadiens, go virtually unacknowledged in our national media to the extent that casuals will ask, for instance, how the Blackhawks can even play against a team from another country. Talk about growing the game, why shouldn't there be efforts to scoop up the "unchurched" and make Leafs/Habs fans out of them? There are Yankees and Red Sox fans everywhere. People in Nebraska or Kentucky or whatever should default to being Leafs fans.

EDIT: "I don't really care about __________________ because I don't trust the NHL to commit to it anyway" is basically a Mad Lib

A quick scroll through Paul's facebook feed reveals that he is John from The Simpsons more than anyone has ever been. My man's collecting shoe-size measurers 

Did we talk about how Disney has to divest the RSNs? Wonder if they'll be sold piecemeal or to one company. It would be neat to see the local names come back like SportSouth, MSC, and PASS.