The holiday week is light on overall games, but the NHL Network will have a couple stocking stuffers before play stops after Tuesday's games.
The U.S. channel will carry the intense Ottawa-Montréal rivalry via the City TV feed.
CBC will have 3 other Canadian teams Saturday night with Philadelphia at the Air Canada Centre in the early game and 2 of the best teams in the West as Calgary comes to Vancouver.
The NHL Network will also have its final City TV Hometown Hockey game of the season with the Maple Leafs in Chicago. Once again, I will suffer a blackout. Speaking of blackout, Canadians who normally get WGN might be blacked out of the WGN telecast Sunday night.
The NHL Network dumped the scheduled Vancouver Canucks game Monday night against Gary Bettman's current favorite desert team. Vancouver is doing well this season — all the more reason to show the Canucks, but the NHL Network would rather show 3 more hours of "NHL Tonight."
The NHL Network will show older games in rebroadcasts from 1 pm Wednesday through 3 pm Friday when the channel begins showing World Juniors games.
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NHL Network
Saturday
Ottawa @ Montréal, 7p
Sunday
Toronto @ Chicago, 7p
Tape delayed
Friday Anaheim @ Montréal, 4p (1-hour)
Saturday Anaheim @ Ottawa, 2p (1-hour)
Monday Toronto @ Chicago, 4p (1-hour)
Tuesday Ottawa @ Washington, 2p (1-hour)
Arizona @ Vancouver, 3p (1-hour)
CBC
Saturday
Philadelphia @ Toronto, 7p
Calgary @ Vancouver, 10p
City
Saturday
Ottawa @ Montréal, 7p
Sunday
Toronto @ Chicago, 7p
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Great idea: talk to 3 NHL owners. Rogers promoted the segment well. The problem is the delivery.
We have 3 owners (Boston, Toronto, and Calgary) who are not household names and faces. Rogers made no attempt to identify the owners. We literally had answers but no perspective about those answers. Eventually, you could figure out which team matched the face, but if you were watching it live, you lost value to the interview.
In the teaser to promote more of the interview during the late game, Rogers identified Toronto owner Larry Tanenbaum. Too late.
In trademark fashion, George Stroumboulopoulos thanks his guests for doing the interview. While doing this interview is unusual for the owners, they know that a) the NHL and Gary Bettman want more of these interviews, and b) Stroumboulopoulos won't ask them tough questions.
Calgary owner Murray Edwards disappears in the middle of the interview. Strombo needed to bring his voice back into the conversation.
Stroumboulopoulos is the perfect host for Gary Bettman because he treats interviews with hockey people like the celebrity interviews that made Strombo famous. With celebrities, you get insight with that method. In hockey interviews, you don't learn much.
The owners were nudged to do the interview but they also knew no harm would happen. An interview that sounds like a good idea but doesn't amount to much: the Rogers way heavily endorsed by Bettman.
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A few Strombo moments this week …
- Stroumboulopoulos told us 3 times in the first few minutes what channels the early games were located. Organize your initial thoughts. A little scripting won't hurt.
- He promoted the late HNIC game (NY Rangers in Vancouver) as being in Punjabi on Omni. That was the first mention I can recall about the Punjabi service since maybe the beginning of the season (if then). Stroumboulopoulos should mention that more often.
- Strombo made a crack about the World Juniors not being televised. Even though Rogers isn't carrying the tournament, the tournament is on TSN. The CBC never had an issue in mentioning the World Juniors even though the tournament is on another channel. Stroumboulopoulos came across as tacky/Rogers employee (same thing). Even though Rogers controls virtually everything, it still isn't happy. How sad. Strombo should rise above that pettiness.
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We don't blame Rogers for sending Elliotte Friedman to talk with the prospective Las Vegas owner (Black Knights?). We are greatly disturbed about the prospect of another lame desert NHL team.
The argument for Western cities such as Seattle and Las Vegas is that the East is already full. Well, all but one of the truly struggling NHL teams are located in the East (2 if you count Dallas). Any of the struggling Eastern teams, especially Florida, could go to Quebec. You wouldn't even have to change the divisions.
Moving Florida to Quebec and Phoenix to Seattle would take care of 2 good markets without expansion. Unfortunately, Gary Bettman's greed will likely be stronger than the push for real hockey markets.
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Poor Sophia Jurksztowicz probably had better plans than coming in on a Saturday night to do a live commercial during 2nd intermission for GameCentre Live. Hopefully, she stayed later for Hockey Central so her night wasn't a complete waste. Rogers gave us a break by not drowning us in reminders, though Strombo was doing a fine job of letting us know.
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CBC is in holiday mode so the on-air promos reflected the season. Each holiday special got 2 promos within a period. "Home Alone" (1st period); "CCMA Holiday Special" (2nd period); "Michael Buble's Christmas in New York" (3rd period).
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2 straight weeks talking about a fired Canadian team head coach. The Edmonton Oilers will eventually be led by Oklahoma City Coach Todd Nelson following a transition with former coach and current GM Craig MacTavish after the team fired yet another head coach in Dallas Eakins.
Eakins joined the list of recent former Oilers head coaches, along with Ralph Krueger (2013), Tom Renney (2010-12), and the late Pat Quinn (2009-10).
Yes, the Oilers are playing really poorly this season but the players have played under so many head coaches, no wonder they don't know which way to go. These players need help on defense and consistency on the bench. Unless Nelson stays for awhile, the players will continue to search for that elusive consistency.
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Sudbury and St. Catherines, Ontario were the homes for Hometown Hockey the last 2 weeks. The Hometown Hockey pregame is the best part of Rogers coverage by far.
Feel like I'm learning a lot about these cities, such as St. Catherines being a huge Buffalo Sabres town.
This week, Hometown Hockey will be in Kingston, Ontario. Maybe Don Cherry will make an appearance.
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To spotlight how long it has been since the Detroit Red Wings had missed the playoffs, Glenn Healy mentioned a #1 song from that time: "Black Magic" by Toronto singer Alannah Myles. The song is actually "Black Velvet" named after the whisky.
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Both feeds on Monday that I had access to were Canadian feeds: New York Rangers at Edmonton as well as Los Angeles at Toronto. The Calgary at Chicago feed wasn't available in my area.
The NHL Network went with the Devils feed against Ottawa in the Thursday afternoon rebroadcast. The Sportsnet feed got the nod for the Dallas Stars in Vancouver.