from Steve Lepore at Awful Announcing,

Every year, hockey fans have complained about the network's weak aesthetic look, lack of substantial analysis, poor coverage of huge news stories (i.e. the entire NHL lockout) and overall dearth of original ideas. If I'm flipping around channels, I would probably rather click on NFL Network, MLB Network or NBA TV. And I'm someone who would rather watch bad hockey television than good anything else. This is a problem.

In the spirit of Festivus, I figured the end of the year might be an appropriate time to air some of the grievances that I and many hockey fans league-wide have with the league's in-house network, and perhaps some ideas that can be used to fix them.

1. NHL ON THE FLY AND NHL TONIGHT, THE NETWORK'S FLAGSHIP SHOWS, ARE BOTH WEAK

MLB Network's MLB Tonight is probably the best "live look-in" style show, in part because they mix in the chatter with getting you live to the actual important moments that the average fan would want to see. Despite not being in the vein of NFL Red Zone, they still will have you watching the key moments when you want to see them. Potential no hitters, bases loaded situations, even just showing you the end of games.

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