NHL All Star game mid-week bomb

Call me when Emily Valentine lights some shit on fire.

I'm just gonna run my knife through that, go once around the pan with a little evoo.

How good does that look?

 

Yup, down but I'm not even sure HNIC knows why.

Now, are they just down from last year when the league came back or are they down as well from the last pre-lockout season? If they were down from the pre-lockout season, there's a problem

The other explanation is: as go the Leafs, so goes HNIC (as the rest of the country not lucky enough to live in Toronto can tell you.) Leafs are kinda pathetic this year and I've stopped watching games when they're getting blown out.

And, apologies to Elliotte, but they have to, have to retire Bob Cole. He was a great announcer but now he just sounds like your Uncle Charlie doing PBP after six rye and gingers after Thanksgiving dinner.

You know, I get sick of Cherry too. Some of his stuff is just plain stupid but you know what? No one leaves the room when he comes on.

 

I turn the station when Cherry comes on. He pissed me off earlier in the season.

And I agree, I want to know if the ratings are down from pre-lockout broadcasts. I haven't seen those numbers. Just ones compared to last year.

As for play-by-play guys, the CBC should NEVER had fired Cuthbert.

 

Zeke, that avatar is so much hotter than Yoda.

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, my friend.

 

It's unfortunate that the NHL hasn't done something -- hell, anything -- to revolutionize its TV coverage.

Maybe it's just because I've never had a pro hockey team in the town I reside, save for a 10-year period when KC had the Blades. But I love, love, love watching hockey in person.

There has to be a way to translate that into tv coverage. I'm not saying that it would vault hockey back to where it once was... but it couldn't hurt.

 

Four letters, my friend: H.D.T.V.

You will never, ever, watch hockey the same way again.

 

Unfortunately, I'm much, much too poor for that option. I was thinking more along the lines of different camera angles.. things they can do to accurately portray the speed of the game. The XFL gave us two things: He Hate Me, and that sweet fly-by-wire camera.

It'd be sweet if they could develop something like that... or perhaps goalie cam. I'm grasping at straws, but then again, so is hockey in America.

 

Here's an idea, similar to goalie cam but a bit different -- have a camera on top of the glass behind each net and make it able to pan all the way up and down the ice so we can see attacks as they're being formed, power plays, etc. It would just be a different thing and I don't think it would be very hard to make it happen.

 

John Shannon, former Exec Producer of HNIC has been named Director of TV Operations (or something like that) for the NHL.

He is, by all accounts, the smartest guy in the world when it comes to televising hockey and what I read is that he's going around the league, market by market, to evaluate all the regional broadcasts. I understand he has the reputation of being a kick-ass kinda guy (but in a nice Canadian way)

 

I heard him interviewed the other day on radio. He was talking about how the American networks/cable stations have been "tutored" by a group of former CBCers who produced, shot, broadcasted hockey in Canada. Apparently they were showing Americans the ropes on how to put together a good broadcast.

Their tour of duty just finished, they've been to every American arena now.

 

Thanks for the update. Didn't realise they were done.

Shannon used to be a regular on TV sports talk shows here. Very knowledgeable guy and very passionate. Of course ,HNIC has over 50 years experience televising hockey so they should know SOMETHING.