While we have no official announcement from the NHL Network, we have a very strong feeling that the rebroadcast of the Saturday late game on Hockey Night in Canada will be very few and far between from now until the end of the regular season.
The NHL Network won't show rebroadcast games on Sunday mornings, and won't show a game opposite a NBC telecast on Sunday afternoon. And of course, the channel won't show the game live.
If that pattern holds, you won't see a HNIC late game on the NHL Network until February 26 and then not again until March 25. This also means no After Hours, unless you watch it online.
While the channel has cut back on Canadian-based teams as the season progresses, the NHL Network has served up most of the Saturday late games in years past. Again, if the pattern continues, this won't happen in 2012.
The schedule on the NHL Web site only features live telecasts, so you can't check weeks down the road. So far, the pattern has been no Sunday mornings and no games opposite a NBC telecast. This reduces the window of opportunity.
---
This weekend, Hockey Night in Canada has four exciting games, and unless you can get a CBC feed, you won't see any of them.
Alex Ovechkin and his Washington Capitals travel to Montréal for a matinee. The NHL Network goes with Pittsburgh at Boston.
The Battle of Ontario is a chance to see the hot Ottawa Senators and the rising Toronto Maple Leafs fight for actual playoff spots. The NHL Network is showing an American game — Los Angeles at Carolina — on Saturday night this week. The channel refuses to carry any Battle of Ontario games this season.
Detroit at Edmonton is the late game, and the channel won't carry this game because it needs to show hours and hours of the repeat of NHL Tonight on Sunday morning.
Winnipeg is at Montréal for a Sunday afternoon matinee. NBC will have one of two Northeastern games on Sunday afternoon.
This is a good weekend to live in Canada or have NHL Center Ice. If you don't, you might as well read a book.
A good weekend? HA. Not if you're watching the Superbowl with mandatory Canadian Commercial substitutions. Our cable companies switch their feeds during every U.S. program that is carried - at the same time - by both a Cdn. and a regional U.S. "broadcaster". And a very high percentage of Cdns use either a cable or satellite system.
Yet for 364 days of the year, this works great for the 3 or 4 major Cdn. network /distribution owners. They are also excluded [as a Culture industry] from Free Trade and/or foreign-ownership competition.
If the Superbowl (in Canada) were shown on a "mandatory carriage" cable sports channel, then the U.S. broadcaster feed would be unaltered. Like with Golf or the MLB World Series.
P.S. The cable systems crops all feeds at 4/3 instead of displaying as a letterbox format. Unless you upgrade for the special default HD channel lineup system. Half the time, my folks forget to tune into their HD channels instead of the traditional channel numbers.
(I'm just using an OTA converter box).
Posted by: CQ | February 03, 2012 at 11:23 AM
I do have a great deal of sympathy over the Super Bowl ads. Though Canadians get the U.S. signals, there aren't many places, especially with the digital conversion, to get the OTA signals. I hear that those in Toronto can pick up the Buffalo signals. But as you point out, with a OTA converter box, you aren't getting HD.
Posted by: Chad | February 03, 2012 at 08:18 PM
Good enough though, and better than using standard cable. Complete Letterbox and the genuine signal!
Posted by: CQ | February 03, 2012 at 10:42 PM