NBCSN presents its final scheduled game with a Canadian team as the Montréal Canadiens host Pittsburgh Thursday night.
The NHL Network has the CBC feed with Sidney Crosby and his mates in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre. City TV will tag along for the early game. CBC gets Wild in Edmonton in the Saturday nightcap.
Rogers Sportsnet has Hometown Hockey from Brampton, ON (minus SNP) as the Brooklyn team is in Calgary. The regional channels will have the Battle of Alberta on Tuesday from the arena that Gary Bettman wants to never see again.
Wednesday Night Hockey features the green men from Dallas in Toronto early on Rogers Sportsnet and San Jose going far north to Edmonton in the nightcap on Rogers Sportsnet One.
The NHL Network has a U.S. game late on Saturday afternoon that may knock out most or all of the Rogers pregame.
NBCSN
Thursday
Pittsburgh @ Montréal, 7:30p
NHL Network
Saturday
Pittsburgh @ Toronto, 7p
Tape delayed
Saturday Calgary @ Ottawa, 11a
Tuesday Montréal @ Columbus, 1p
Winnipeg @ Washington, 3p
Wednesday Edmonton @ Calgary, 2p
Winnipeg @ Nashville, 3p
Thursday Dallas @ Toronto, 1p
San Jose @ Edmonton, 2p
CBC
Saturday
Pittsburgh @ Toronto, 7p
Minnesota @ Edmonton, 10p
City
Saturday
Pittsburgh @ Toronto, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet
Sunday
NY Islanders @ Calgary, 7p
Tuesday
Edmonton @ Calgary, 9p
Wednesday
Dallas @ Toronto, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet One
Wednesday
San Jose @ Edmonton, 9:30p
Canadian NHL teams in outdoor games
Year | Date | Stadium | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2003 | November 22 | Commonwealth Stadium | Montréal 4, Edmonton 3 |
2011 | February 20 | McMahon Stadium | Calgary 4, Montréal 0 |
2014 | January 1 | Michigan Stadium | Toronto 3, Detroit 2 (SO) |
2014 | March 2 | BC Place | Ottawa 4, Vancouver 2 |
2016 | January 1 | Gillette Stadium | Montréal 5, Boston 1 |
2016 | October 23 | Investors Group Field | Edmonton 3, Winnipeg 0 |
2017 | January 1 | BMO Field | Toronto 5, Detroit 4 (SO) |
2017 | December 16 | TD Place | Ottawa 3, Montréal 0 |
2018 | March 3 | Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium | Washington 5, Toronto 2 |
Watching what happened on Saturday night, the question that kept leaping into my head, "Why were the Toronto Maple Leafs here?" Once we got to 10:57 pm Eastern, the other question, "Why was NBC here if there was only a 3-hour window?"
With 4:12 left in the 3rd period and with fewer than 60 seconds warning, NBC dumped the game to NBCSN not for Saturday Night Live but for local news in the Eastern and Central time zones.
Those will blame the brief power outage but the ceremony after 8 pm Eastern played its part. Of course, if NBC started the coverage at 7 pm Eastern, you could have had plenty of ceremony, a power outage, and a shootout before 11 pm Eastern.
This leads us back to question #1. While exposure for Canadian teams on NBC can be valuable, everyone would have been better off with Columbus playing Washington in this game. And that would have been true even if the Leafs had been victorious.
NBC, when promoting upcoming games on U.S. television, deliberately left out the Toronto-Buffalo NBCSN game on the following Monday. The NHL Network noted that Washington was trying to become a team with at least 3 outdoor wins. Toronto was trying for that too but that wasn't worthy of mentioning by the U.S. channel.
Canadian teams had done pretty well in outdoor games lately. But like the Olympics streaks, this one came to end.
American viewers who watched the NHL Network matinee rebroadcast didn't get to see all of the remaining time, missing just over a minute within that coverage. NBC didn't miss any scoring but got its jingoistic patriotic parade. Hockey played second fiddle to that right until the end.
The U.S. audience missed Coach's Corner and Saturday Headlines segments. Elliotte Friedman noted in the Saturday Headlines segment that the NHL is looking for other places in Canada for outdoor games. Friedman said Regina might be on that list. Provided any of this is ultimately true, nice that the NHL would bring an outdoor game to such a hockey-loving area. Montréal still hasn't hosted an outdoor game but the NHL doesn't seem interested in bringing an outdoor game to La Belle Province.
---
The NHL Global Series likes using Canadian teams. Edmonton starts its 2018-2019 season October 6 against New Jersey at the Scandinavium in Gothenburg, Sweden. While Gothenburg has hosted NHL preseason games, this will be the first regular season game. Gothenburg is on the west coast of Sweden across from the northern tip of Denmark.
Leon Draisaitl will be thrilled to know the Oilers will have part of their training camp in Germany. Edmonton will play an exhibition game against Kölner Haie October 3 in Cologne.
The Winnipeg Jets will share a pair of games with Florida at Harwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland on November 1-2. Patrik Laine and Teemu Selanne are the primary Jets connections to Finland.
---
The Vancouver Canucks will host the 2019 NHL draft on June 21-22. The timing is geared to the team's 50th anniversary season. The Canucks hosted the draft in 2006 at GM Place and 1990 at BC Place. The NHL says the economic impact will be between $8-10 million U.S.
We don't want to obsess about every NHL trade deadline transaction, but the Thomas Vanek story is intriguing. When Vancouver signed Vanek late in the off-season, everyone knew that Vanek was signed to trade him later for draft picks.
Vanek scored 41 points with 17 goals and 24 assists in 61 games. He also has a reputation for being a scorer in the playoffs, even if that didn't happen while he was in Montréal.
The Canucks didn't get a draft pick for Vanek. Vancouver acquired veteran winger Jussi Jokinen and 22-year-old centre Tyler Motte. Jokinen is now on his 4th NHL team in the 2017-2018 season.
Motte is clearly the prize. Motte has 64 NHL games; he was a 4th-round pick of Chicago in 2013. Is he better than getting a draft pick?
Vancouver GM Jim Benning has been criticized for not getting the one thing Vanek was supposed to bring back: a draft pick. A lot of teams needed what Vanek would give them. Maybe Benning could have received more if he traded Vanek earlier.
In an alternative universe, Benning could have announced an extra draft pick at that 2019 draft at Rogers Arena, a gift for signing Vanek in the 2017-2018 season.
CanadianCrossing.com NHL coverage
Barry Pederson found himself in a fortunate position on Saturday. Pederson, who does studio analysis for NESN, was asked to work with the legendary Bob Cole on Hockey Night in Canada. Garry Galley couldn't make it to Boston thanks to the weather.
Pederson is a Canadian and a former NHL player. His distinction was being traded to Vancouver for Cam Neely.
The NHL Network chose to use the NESN feed on the Sunday afternoon matinee rebroadcast. That is like turning down steak to eat beef-flavored dog food.
---
NBCSN went with John Forslund and Shane Hnidy for the Maple Leafs in Buffalo. Hnidy has been missed in Winnipeg on TSN3 this season. Was a bit surprised to see Hnidy on the NBCSN docket the previous week.
Chris Cuthbert was scheduled for Tuesday night on NBCSN and ended up working Wednesday night likely due to the weather on the U.S. channel.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.