I’ll admit that my expectations have risen in the past couple of weeks. There was a lot of early hubbub about how Turner and ESPN were going to change hockey coverage, and without proof I was worried it would simply be NBC’s coverage packaged into another, albeit more widely available, platform.

But after seeing ESPN make the commitment to a studio show, seeing the Turner media preview, I’m more confident that hockey coverage is headed in a better direction in the United States. The big thing is having two networks pushing each other, I like that TNT wants to beat ESPN and vice versa — I think both hired a rules expert for that reason, and once Wayne Gretzky was courted by both, the runner-up in signing Gretzky went and hired Mark Messier.

-Sean Shapiro of The Athletic. Read more ($$$) from Shapio and Richard Deitsch on ESPN and TNT.