The NHL Network throws us a pre-holiday curveball by picking up the Montréal Canadiens in the U.S. capital with the City TV feed.
The channel passed up the early CBC game of Sidney Crosby at the Air Canada Centre. The CBC nightcap has Tampa Bay at Rogers Place in Edmonton.
The Hometown Hockey festival from Milton, ON will have Ottawa in Brooklyn. The Rogers Sportsnet feed hopefully will be available as the backup game on the NHL Network in the San Jose and Chicago markets.
Rogers Sportsnet One jumps in with a Monday night Leafs home game with Anaheim. SNE, SNO, and SNP also make the leap.
Rogers Sportsnet 360 steps up with the Ottawa Senators hosting New Jersey on Saturday night. The channel also helps out with the Canadiens on a Thursday night with the Wild at the Bell Centre.
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NHL Network
Saturday
Montréal @ Washington, 7p
Tape delayed
Saturday San Jose @ Montréal, Noon
Tuesday Edmonton @ St. Louis, 1p
Anaheim @ Toronto, 3p
Thursday Edmonton @ Arizona, 1p
CBC
Saturday
Pittsburgh @ Toronto, 7p
Tampa Bay @ Edmonton, 10p
City
Saturday
Montréal @ Washington, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet
Sunday
Ottawa @ NY Islanders, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet One
Monday
Anaheim @ Toronto, 7:30p
Rogers Sportsnet 360
Saturday
New Jersey @ Ottawa, 7p
Thursday
Minnesota @ Montréal, 7:30p
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"How's that not a penalty?" The voice of Toronto head coach Mike Babcock was rather loud after Boston's David Krecji took out Toronto's Mark Marincin against the boards in the 1st period. Krecji gave Marincin a shove and took out the defenceman with a stick on skate.
The answer, unfortunately, is "because they are the Boston Bruins and they get away with cheap shots all the time."
Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson speak between the lines as to when a penalty should have been called. This is one of the many times Glenn Healy is missed.
Boston players do these kind of moves because they can get away with it. The Bruins finally got called for 2 penalties in the 3rd period. Both were obvious. Both times the cameras captured whining about the calls.
Between that and finding out (what we already knew) that Connor McDavid was taken down deliberately last year against Philadelphia, this sport is becoming depressing. These were hits into the boards that had nothing to do with hockey.
Consistent refereeing and trying to avoid major injuries are not shiny money from a future team in the desert, but Gary Bettman should start paying a lot more attention to what is happening on the ice.
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Rogers Sportsnet jumped the gun in the pregame of playing the audio from an interview with Christine Simpson and Patrice Bergeron. Simpson started her talk, as Rogers now does, with the "guys in the studio said …" intro. So we've learned that the interviews aren't live and she already knew what the studio show was going to cover.
The interviews in the CBC days always seemed live. Rogers may be overplanning the pregame or the CBC was a lot more smooth in their presentation.
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Much was made when Montréal was blown out by Columbus 10-0, but that was just a single game. The Canadiens' 10-1 win over Colorado Saturday night was indeed just a single game. Max Pacioretty had 4 goals on the night; Brian Flynn scored 2 goals in the 1st period.
Goal differential is a potential tiebreaker. So in those 2 games, Montréal is -1, a whole lot better than -10.
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Odd to realize that the #1 crew is down to 2 people but Rogers is trying a 3-person crew in the late game. Hughson/Simpson/Glenn Healy were a smooth running machine in terms of getting all the voices in the game. Dave Randorf, Louie DeBrusk, and Cassie Campbell-Pascall are still getting used to each other. The late game is good for experimentation.
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The NHL Network was generous Monday night with the Rogers Sportsnet East feed complete with pregame and intermission breaks. Too bad the game had too much violence and not enough scoring.
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The NBCSN audience got a dose of Chris Cuthbert Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. Cuthbert worked with his old friend Pierre McGuire. Gord Miller works tonight for NBCSN in Pittsburgh.
NBCSN is smart to use the TSN folks now since Miller will be busy covering the World Juniors in Montreal and Toronto and Cuthbert will double up on Leafs and Sens telecasts on TSN4 and TSN5, respectively.
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Another week with only 5 #%$@% CBC promos. The holiday season is upon us with a pair of promos for the Murdoch Mysteries holiday offering.
The Kim's Convenience promo gave us a summary for the next episode, something we haven't seen previously.
The matinee rebroadcasts were generous with CBC promos. The early game had repeat promos for Once Upon a Murdoch Christmas (late in 1st) and Canada's Smartest Person (late in 2nd). The late game matinee rebroadcast had the Once Upon a Murdoch Christmas promo (late in 1st) and what was the missing promo in the early game, a generic Kim's Convenience (late in 3rd).
Early game: Canada's Smartest Person; Once Upon a Murdoch Christmas (1st); Kim's Convenience; Canada's Smartest Person (2nd); Once Upon a Murdoch Christmas (3rd)
Great column, Chad. A few things to comment on:
"...this sport is becoming depressing. These were hits into the boards that had nothing to do with hockey." -- A big problem here is that the league thinks violence sells. Hard to imagine the officials having stones all of a sudden.
"The interviews in the CBC days always seemed live. Rogers may be overplanning the pregame or the CBC was a lot more smooth in their presentation." -- Years ago (2007) when I interned at TSN, I had access to truck feeds and was able to figure out that very little of this sort of stuff is actually done live.
Finally, I'm not really sure why they're trying to utilize Cassie Campbell-Pascall in a three person crew as they are but her colour work is appreciated nonetheless.
Posted by: Tyler | December 22, 2016 at 10:38 AM