It's The Most Wonderfull Time of The Year

Ok, so maybe the title is a little misleading. But if you're a hockey fan you know exactly what I am talking about. It's October 1st. Why is October 1st so important this year? Nothing really, aside from the official start of the NHL regular season. If you're a fan of the NHL this is the day you have been waiting for. If you're a fan of the NHL in the United States and don't have cable or satellite, this is probably the first time you're hearing about this. That's right, I'm going to complain about how little hockey coverage there is in the United States. I'm currently listening to the best local sports station in the Portland Metro (95.5 The Game if you're interested). They're talking about fantasy football, real football, soccer and basketball. I can turn on the regular talk station in Edmonton (630 CHED) and hear more about hockey in 5 minutes then if I listened to The Game all day. Now I'm not blaming The Game. They can only work with what they have. The Portland Metro has no pro hockey (the Portland Winterhawks are pre-draft and let's be honest haven't been that good for quite some times). For that matter the Portland Metro only has one pro team and that's basketball.
But this blog isn't about 95.5 The Game and their lack of hockey coverage. This is much bigger than that. This is about national NHL coverage.

In a previous post I commented extensively (okay, I rambled I know) about how much I disliked a couple of NHL decisions with regarding television coverage in the United States. In Canada the CBC, for all the problems it appears to have, has carried Hockey Night In Canada every Saturday night for longer than my parents have been alive. HNIC is a Canadian staple. Hundreds of thousands of families sit in front of the TV every Saturday night and watch two teams battle it out on live television. In the United States what do you get to watch on network television on Saturday afternoon/night? College football on ABC (at least through January), re-runs or paid programming on CBS and NBC. FOX actually has new shows. Saturday is a dead night for networks in the US, why not put hockey on then. NBC currently has the right to the NHL for over the air broadcast. NBC could easily put one NHL game a week on Saturday night. It makes sense to me and would get me to watch NBC more often, even if I don't like their coverage.

Still I'm a little but frustrated that all the major leagues in North America have decided that a vast majority of their television coverage is not accessible to that common person. The common person doesn't have cable and can't (or shouldn't be able to) afford to pay extra fees to watch games online or via special packages. I think NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is taking the league in a direction that could ruin it. I won't even get in to what happened in Phoenix over the summer (yeah, I need more time to process, there will be a post about it soon). The NHL needs to figure out that it's fans want hockey to be easy to view. More viewers equals more money. Make it easier to see and you'll do better. Keep trying to get it on some channel owned by Comcast (Versus) instead of on major networks and you'll never get ahead. Just my two cents. I would really like to watch hockey tonight. Maybe I'll find someone streaming it online for free....sigh. Thanks for reading, you know how to get a hold of me and comments are moderated but welcomed.