2013-14 NHL Season: "We Are North American Scum"

[Kramerica Industries]

Oh wait, Fox owns YES now, not MSG. My mistake! New York has too many sports channels.

And here I am forgetting at every moment that Fox owns YES, even though there was a report just the other day about them upping their stake to 80% ownership of the network.

Speaking of NY networks, I'm not even sure what use SNY is to anybody outside of baseball season. MSG has all three hockey teams and the Knicks, YES has the Yankees and the Nets, and SNY is the Mets and a bunch of nothingness that is probably more fun to watch than the Mets are.

[tutorhunky]

So Michalek, Anderson, AND Da Costa all had good games on the same night? This whole week is just not going Columbus' way isn't it?

Not exactly. They outplayed Buffalo Saturday night and beat the Sabres everywhere except the scoreboard (giving up two SH goals didn't help.) Last night, they're pitching a shut out against the Hurricanes for the first 52 minutes of the game. By minute 55, they're down 3-2 and that was that. Tonight may have been the most frustrating of the three. The Jackets never looked good tonight. Even when they tied it up in the 3rd, it just felt like they were prolonging the inevitable - and they were. Hopefully, they can right the ship against the Caps Thursday night.

Prevent defense only prevents you from winning.

[dbadefense1990]

If NBC did show Pacific teams on Sundays, the fans would probably just bitch about a 9 a.m. local start. As annoying as the NBC pantheon is, it's perfectly defensible from a programming standpoint.

During their peak years, the Lakers were frequently scheduled to play east-coast teams at 9:30am PST on Sundays, and there were no complaints about this, knowing how vocal that fanbase is. I really don't think any west-coast NHL fan would be that dense to believe that playing an east-coast team with a 1pm local start in the Atlantic would be an example of "east-coast bias" against Pacific coast teams.

[ninersdd]

FWIW Hahn did a VS game in 2010, though it was with Billy Jaffe I believe.

[Funky Bunky]

So I got a kick out of hearing "Sweet Leaf" by Black Sabbath during the Wild - Ducks game a few minutes ago. Nothing says "family fun" quite like a song about weed.

Well, it is California...

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

I'm assuming they're barred from announcing games on a national basis, due to possible issues arising from FOX employees going in favor of rival networks (ABC/ESPN back then, NBC now).

Daryl Reaugh, John Forslund, and Joe Micheletti all work for NBC Sports along with Fox-owned RSNs.

Oh and the Blackhawks are garbage and will lose in the first round. They're just not trying this year.

Granted I'm not up to date on Dallas Stars announcing, but I thought Daryl Reaugh was still commenting with Ralph Strangis? Or does he do dual work?

[Kramerica Industries]

Razor and Strangis still call Stars games. When we start to discuss people like Forslund and Razor, they only do work for NBC every now and then during the regular season; with Doc and Strader full-time with the network now (and plenty of color guys to go around), they pick up the tab on the vast majority of the games produced by NBC these days.

[charger77]

The Coyotes will officially be the Arizona Coyotes next year.

Hopefully jerseys with the PHX patch will be cheap.

[The_Admiral]

Interesting that the one team not afraid to associate with Phoenix is the most popular of the four.

[Still MIGHTY]

Interesting that the one team not afraid to associate with Phoenix is the most popular of the four.

The Suns are not more popular than the Cardinals in Phoenix. I'd even debate them being more popular than the D-Backs. (And if we factor in college, ASU pushes them down another rung.)

[IceCap]

Because we're kinda tired of being treated like second class citizens by the NHL and its broadcast partners. Sure, they finally graciously allowed some Pacific teams to grace their airwaves, but they didn't send one of their true national teams out.

Hell, when I watched the recording the next day, I thought NBCSN half-assed the Dodger Stadium game also and cut corners in ways that they didn't with the Yankee Stadium game the next morning.

I understand NBC has to maintain a bottom-line, but that shouldn't get in the way of equal coverage.

If you ain't O6, you aren't nothing apparently.

The Flyers, Capitals, and Penguins are Original Six teams? Who knew?

With how often they get the national exposure, we might as well just annex Pittsburgh and Washington.

Ah, I get it. "Original Six" just means whatever we want it to mean! Even though teams that aren't actually Original Six teams get on NBC regularly and two of the most prestigious Original Six teams are rarely shown at all!

NBC doesn't care about the Original Six. They care about teams in the American Northeast and Midwest. And while that programming decision is irksome it is defensible.

Oh well. *enjoys the best, most extensive hockey coverage out there short of paying for the NHL Network*

[The_Admiral]

I do think there was a while there where NBC was really pushing the New York Rangers in a way that was not commensurate with their talent level or star power, but that doesn't mean they should start showing, like, Hurricanes-Predators in a marquee slot in the interest of phony-baloney fairness. I mean, the RSNs that carry the Hurricanes and Predators don't even carry Hurricanes-Predators! That's always the game where the only way to watch it on Gamecenter is to watch the jumbotron feed with the radio pbp.

[teddthebucfan]

Oh wait, Fox owns YES now, not MSG. My mistake! New York has too many sports channels.

And here I am forgetting at every moment that Fox owns YES, even though there was a report just the other day about them upping their stake to 80% ownership of the network.

Speaking of NY networks, I'm not even sure what use SNY is to anybody outside of baseball season. MSG has all three hockey teams and the Knicks, YES has the Yankees and the Nets, and SNY is the Mets and a bunch of nothingness that is probably more fun to watch than the Mets are.

SNY has college basketball... and not much else.

[cmm]

Oh wait, Fox owns YES now, not MSG. My mistake! New York has too many sports channels.

And here I am forgetting at every moment that Fox owns YES, even though there was a report just the other day about them upping their stake to 80% ownership of the network.

Speaking of NY networks, I'm not even sure what use SNY is to anybody outside of baseball season. MSG has all three hockey teams and the Knicks, YES has the Yankees and the Nets, and SNY is the Mets and a bunch of nothingness that is probably more fun to watch than the Mets are.

SNY has college basketball... and not much else.

They're showing Johan's no-hitter (again) on Friday!

[Alex Houston]

Because we're kinda tired of being treated like second class citizens by the NHL and its broadcast partners. Sure, they finally graciously allowed some Pacific teams to grace their airwaves, but they didn't send one of their true national teams out.

Hell, when I watched the recording the next day, I thought NBCSN half-assed the Dodger Stadium game also and cut corners in ways that they didn't with the Yankee Stadium game the next morning.

I understand NBC has to maintain a bottom-line, but that shouldn't get in the way of equal coverage.

If you ain't O6, you aren't nothing apparently.

The Flyers, Capitals, and Penguins are Original Six teams? Who knew?

With how often they get the national exposure, we might as well just annex Pittsburgh and Washington.

Ah, I get it. "Original Six" just means whatever we want it to mean! Even though teams that aren't actually Original Six teams get on NBC regularly and two of the most prestigious Original Six teams are rarely shown at all!

NBC doesn't care about the Original Six. They care about teams in the American Northeast and Midwest. And while that programming decision is irksome it is defensible.

Oh well. *enjoys the best, most extensive hockey coverage out there short of paying for the NHL Network*

It's understandable that NBC would make a business decision to lean more for the Midwest and Northeast markets in Sunday games because the demand for the sport is always going to be there in those regions. That I get. However, I don't see why they don't extend coverage to teams doing well in the West and Mountain time zones, when they seem to make an effort in other areas, like the Stadium Series. Why continually relegate them to cable/satellite TV where they can't be seen by a percentage of fans? It doesn't make much sense to me. Toronto and Montreal should be added to their regular lineup.

[IceCap]

I do think there was a while there where NBC was really pushing the New York Rangers in a way that was not commensurate with their talent level or star power...

You said it best when you said that no team has squeezed more out of a single championship then the New York Rangers have out of the 1994 Stanley Cup Championship. They were really played up as the NHL's answer to the Yankees, but I think that was due to a few other factors. You could say the NHL has two answers to the Yankees. The Canadiens in terms of overall prestige, history, and championships, and the Red Wings in terms of recent success. The problems, for American networks, were that the Canadiens were a Canadian team and thus not worth promoting and the Red Wings played in the West, away from the big name matchups in the East. So the Rangers, playing in New York and with a recent(is) championship and a long history in their own right, became the defacto "premier team" in the post Red WIngs/Stars/Avalanche era.

[FiddySicks]

Interesting that the one team not afraid to associate with Phoenix is the most popular of the four.

The Suns are not more popular than the Cardinals in Phoenix. I'd even debate them being more popular than the D-Backs. (And if we factor in college, ASU pushes them down another rung.)

Haha yeah, the Suns are historically the best followed, and they were the most popular maybe a decade ago, but definitely not now.

I'd say it goes like this:

Cardinals (Uggh. And they'd be even more popular if they didn't play all the way out in Glenganistan)

D Backs (they're actually not even that far behind the Cardinals)

ASU football

Suns

[IceCap]

Because we're kinda tired of being treated like second class citizens by the NHL and its broadcast partners. Sure, they finally graciously allowed some Pacific teams to grace their airwaves, but they didn't send one of their true national teams out.

Hell, when I watched the recording the next day, I thought NBCSN half-assed the Dodger Stadium game also and cut corners in ways that they didn't with the Yankee Stadium game the next morning.

I understand NBC has to maintain a bottom-line, but that shouldn't get in the way of equal coverage.

If you ain't O6, you aren't nothing apparently.

The Flyers, Capitals, and Penguins are Original Six teams? Who knew?

With how often they get the national exposure, we might as well just annex Pittsburgh and Washington.

Ah, I get it. "Original Six" just means whatever we want it to mean! Even though teams that aren't actually Original Six teams get on NBC regularly and two of the most prestigious Original Six teams are rarely shown at all!

NBC doesn't care about the Original Six. They care about teams in the American Northeast and Midwest. And while that programming decision is irksome it is defensible.

Oh well. *enjoys the best, most extensive hockey coverage out there short of paying for the NHL Network*

It's understandable that NBC would make a business decision to lean more for the Midwest and Northeast markets in Sunday games because the demand for the sport is always going to be there in those regions. That I get. However, I don't see why they don't extend coverage to teams doing well in the West and Mountain time zones, when they seem to make an effort in other areas, like the Stadium Series. Why continually relegate them to cable/satellite TV where they can't be seen by a percentage of fans? It doesn't make much sense to me. Toronto and Montreal should be added to their regular lineup.

I understand why Montreal and Toronto aren't in their regular lineup. They don't have sizable American followings. The Canadiens are that weird French team to the majority of Americans and while Toronto has the largest fanbase in the US out of the seven Canadian teams it's not comparable to the fanbases of the American Midwest and Northeast teams. On top of that who NBC decides to show doesn't effect me. Canadian coverage of the NHL is just dynamite. I'm never really lacking.

I can see, however, how NBC's coverage is irksome. It's also defensible though, which is what makes it difficult to argue. I can see why they should give Ducks-Sharks air time, but at the same time I understand why they would choose Rangers-Bruins instead. Hockey, for all of its growth and success, is still a regional game at heart. That's where the most money is. Yeah, teams on the West Coast deserve love too (the Ducks especially, given the year they're having) but you're never going to get networks to abandon the sure thing in the Northeast and Midwest.

[ninersdd]

I remember a few short years ago when NBC would show Rangers-Flyers multiple times. I understand they're an NY team, but honestly the Rangers were one of the most boring teams in the league. I'd rather watch multiple Sid-Ovechkin games; at least those 2 teams are fun to watch. It's too bad none of the California teams will be on NBC, as they're all cup contenders. The only non playoff game on NBC the Sharks have got was at Detroit on hockey day in America in 2012.

[dbadefense1990]

Interesting that the one team not afraid to associate with Phoenix is the most popular of the four.

More interesting how the local team responsible for giving Phoenix its only professional sports title (Diamondbacks) is less popular than the team most responsible for giving them postseason heartbreaks (Suns).