NHL whoring out to NBC, no surprise here

And on the brighter side of things, Bob Cole will not be calling the Final for the first time since '83 on CBC. Jim Hughson & Craig Simpson will be handling games.

No one paints a picture better than Bob Cole but he's getting on in years and little things like the names of the players and whose got the puck somtimes elude him.

 

The league knows there are just far more people in the US than in Canada. So much so that it's better to have 10 percent of a US audience than 80 percent of a Canadian audience.

And, the other point is well taken, that CBC and the Canadians are going to accept whatever is handed to them. CBC does news and some sports well but, truthfully, the rest of its program lineup is nonsense. Of course, they will show games any night of the week. It sure beats having to air "Coronation Street" and "The Rick Mercer Report".

And, as once Vancouver radio talk show asked aloud "Why is a crown corporation paying millions of dollars to cover sports in the first place?"

I'm not going as far to say that Bettman is anti-Canadian, but he doesn't want the league to be hockey's equivalent of the CFL, either. Canada is important, but it's taken for granted. He knows fans in Hamilton will tune in, whether there's a team there or not. He knows people in Toronto will watch, whether the Leafs are playing or not.

It would be like scheduling the Olympics to suit fans in New Zealand.

 

This sentiment is absolutely ridiculous. The owners would make next to nothing off of TV if it wasn't for CBC and TSN. CBC and TSN should tell the league to go fuck itself next time the rights come up. Don't give them a penny until you have more control over the schedule. Only in the NHL is it a good business model to treat your best fans the worst. NBC doesn't pay a dime, they should have no Fucking say.

If you have to go to a combo deal between versus and ESPN, fine. The league is a niche sport in the States and there is nothing wrong with that. The league keeps chasing something that is not there. How many times does it have to fail on network TV for the league to realize this.

 

NHL can't have a game on weeknights because it may interfere with Conan.

 

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I'll echo what JC said.

That's utter nonsense.

CBC and TSN are the league's largest non-ticket sales revenue generators and, has been pointed out numerous times, the six Canadian teams account for anywhere from 30-40% of league revenue, depending on whose numbers you believe. To treat those parties as an afterthought is symptomatic of the way the NHL does business.

They have been chasing this elusive American market for over forty years now, and guess what? It hasn't worked. In the meantime, Gary the Weasel keeps trying to justify his expansion into the American South by propping up colossal failures like Phoenix while at the same time keeping guys like Balsillie out of the boy's club.

And to say that it's like scheduling the Olympics for New Zealand is fucking idiotic.

Oh, and I'll take the Rick Mercer Report over 99% of what's on American television any day of the week.

 

Holy crap that is a FANTASTIC POINT!

:

 

Yes, I could have swore I read that earlier.

 

Maybe I'm just a dumb American when it comes to this, but I guess I don't see why playing on back-to-back nights is such a huge deal.

During the regular season, the Red Wings played 16 pairs of back-to-backs and the Pens played 13 pairs back-to-backs. In most of those cases, there was also travel involved between the two games.

Neither team will have played for more than a week and there's no travel in between games. I guess I don't see a reason for the uproar. If back-to-backs weren't a regular deal during the regular season, then there might be something to this.

But for the Wings, 19.5 percent of their games were played one night after playing. And they still ended up with 112 points. I think they're going to be OK.

Now if you want to bitch about how the NHL has handled the whole TV schedule? That's an entirely different situation. I think that's a total mess.

In terms of catering to US rather than Canada, that's simply the reality. It's where there is the most room for growth. At the same time, there are also many good hockey markets in the US. If you look at percentage of seats sold for games during the season, there were 12 teams that sold out every game or had more tickets sold than listed capacity. All six Canadian teams are on that list, but so are Chicago, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Rangers, Philly and San Jose. Three other US teams are close Buffalo (99.2 percent), Detroit (99) and Anaheim (98.9).

 

ACC

There haven't been back to back games in the Final since 1955. There's a reason for that.

You can't compare back to backs in the regular season with the playoffs and particularly back to back games in the Final. The intensity level in February is probably 20% of what it is in the playoffs.

The "room for growth" argument is a non-starter. The sport will always be a niche one, period.

The realilty--if you want to talk about reality--is that NBC gets a free ride yet STILL dictates the schedule. Only in the NHL would a business cater to the desires of a freeloader while other businesses who pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rights fees get ignored. It's Alice in Wonderland shit.

That's what we're whining about up here.

 

While it's true that NBC didn't want to have a game mess up Conan, the original finals schedule (before the conference finals finished so early) was going to have Game 1 on Friday, June 4. Obviously that could interfere with Conan, but it would be the fifth show and not the first.

 

This guy thinks you're full of it....

 

Puck Daddy goes the other way on this argument ...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Seriously-who-doesn-t-like-back-to-back-Finals-;_ylt=Am7ngNa4Ex3Ttv9wVoTcFmw5nYcB?urn=nhl,166517

The moaning about the playoff schedule in some corners of the media and hockey fandom has been one of the most baffling and asinine developments of the postseason.

Two days before the finals is "too short." Eight days before the finals would have been a "crippling blow" for positive momentum. The entire thing plays out like some bizarro hockey version of Goldilocks and the porridge, except there's no one who can pin down what "just right" is.