Articles in Hockey Media

Once the HNIC video extraordinaire.

Michael Farber with the narrative.

from John Gushue of CBC,

Bob Cole, whose voice and lively language were the Saturday night soundtrack to hockey games over a broadcasting career that spanned more than half a century, has died.

Cole, who was 90, died Wednesday night in St. John's surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, said.

"Thank you for decades of love for his work, love of Newfoundland and love of hockey," Megan Cole told CBC News on Thursday.

Cole said her father had been healthy "up until the very end."

continued

TORONTO, Canada, April 25, 2024 — Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Rogers Communications, and the National Hockey League (NHL) today announced a milestone two-year agreement in Canada to bring hockey fans Monday night NHL hockey exclusively on Prime Video.

Prime Monday Night Hockey will stream all national regular season Monday night NHL games in English for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 NHL seasons. The deal is the NHL’s first exclusive national broadcast package with a digital-only streaming service in Canada. The Prime Monday Night Hockey package, produced by Prime Video, will feature a new broadcast team offering in-depth analysis and play-by-play coverage, and stream live exclusively to Prime members in Canada.

via TNT Sports,

via the NHL PR department,

NHL Network™ today announced it will air 11 consecutive hours of live NHL Trade Deadline coverage tomorrow, March 8. A simulcast of Sportsnet’s Hockey Central will begin the coverage at 10 a.m. ET, followed by a seven-hour trade deadline edition of NHL Tonight™ at 2 p.m. ET. Live analysis, interviews and updates from hosts Jamison Coyle and Jamie Hersch, and analysts Brian Boyle, E.J. Hradek, Mike Kelly and Dave Reid will be featured throughout the day. Trade Deadline content will be highlighted across NHL Network’s social media platforms tomorrow, including clips from NHL Tonight.

In addition to its NHL Trade Deadline coverage, NHL Network’s live game schedule, including four NHL Network Showcase™ telecasts presented by SAP will air throughout the rest of March. E.J. Hradek and Mike Johnson will call an NHL Network Showcase game presented by SAP next weekend, with the Buffalo Sabres at the Detroit Red Wings Saturday, March 16 at 12:30 p.m. ET.

SECAUCUS, NJ (March 5, 2024) – NHL Network™ today announced that Kathryn Tappen has rejoined NHL Network as a studio host and reporter appearing across its programming. The veteran sports broadcaster will make her season debut on NHL Network’s NHL Now live at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 6 alongside Mike Rupp and Kevin Weekes.

When economic forces hit The Times hard enough for management to lay off more than 90 people and offer buyouts to others, I knew it was time for me to get off the merry-go-round, step back, and take time to heal. After 47 years as a sportswriter, the last 34-plus of those at The Times, I have taken a buyout. My last day will be Tuesday.

-Helene Elliott of the LA Times, where you can read more from Helene...

from Chad Finn of the Boston Globe at Bostondotcom,

The irony of his circumstances has not eluded Jack Edwards.

“The way I see it, two things work to my disadvantage,” says Edwards, who has been calling Bruins games on NESN since 2005 and as the exclusive play-by-play voice since 2007.

“The game is speeding up all the time. And I’m slowing down all the time.”

Anyone familiar with the work of the 66-year-old Edwards, particularly over the past couple of seasons, should understand his reference immediately.

He has sounded different in recent seasons. Slower. His speech is sometimes slurred. Certain words, unpredictably, require elongated enunciation.

Hockey is regarded by broadcasters as the most challenging sport to call, largely because of its rapid pace. Edwards, who has called hockey since his days at the University of New Hampshire, can sound as if he is stuck in a neutral-zone trap when he should be on a verbal breakaway.

It’s impossible not to notice, and it’s magnified if you have recently experienced the contrast of watching one of those vintage Bruins broadcasts — before Edwards’s speech pattern changed — that NESN often shows.

Edwards hasn’t discussed the change publicly until now. In part, he says, because his doctors remain mystified about what has happened.

continued

from Michael Russo of The Athletic,

On Wednesday night — for one night at least, with TNT televising the Panthers-Penguins game — those worlds will collide and create a new frontier for the podcast. Bissonnette will walk off the NHL on TNT set at the network’s Atlanta headquarters, stroll over to the Inside the NBA studio next door and take part in the first-ever Spittin’ Chiclets “altcast,” with Whitney, R.A. and sports betting expert and former hockey player Matt Murley.

Spittin’ Chiclets podcasts are known for R-rated language and conversations more fitting of a stereotypical NHL locker room than a national TV broadcast. Because of the language, in particular, for the live altcast on truTV and Max, there will be a Chiclets-specific seven-second delay, just in case things go off the rails.

As the game proceeds, the hosts will offer their takes on everything happening on and off the ice during the game while welcoming special guests throughout the night.

“It’s Chiclets’ version of (ESPN’s) ManningCast, but we’re kind of in our own little lane,” Bissonnette says.

more ($)

from Amalie Benjamin of the NHL's website,

In the snippet of video, shaky and shot diagonally and not entirely in focus, the voice comes through loud and clear and full of emotion.

“That’s my dad,” Jorge Lopez yells on the crowded Las Vegas Strip with his phone trained on a passing bus. “That’s my dad right there.”

Jesus Lopez, the Spanish language play-by-play broadcaster for the Vegas Golden Knights, has unfurled a Mexican flag atop the bus and is shaking it as his son hits record. It is days after the Golden Knights captured the Stanley Cup last June, besting the Florida Panthers in five games in the best-of-7 Final, and earning the franchise’s first title six years into its existence.

“It’s as if he had a second life,” Jorge said, marveling at who his father is, at what he’s done.

It’s as unlikely a story as there is in hockey, that of the Golden Knights and that of Lopez, whose background in hockey was nonexistent when he came to the United States from Mexico, when the threats and violence, which he believes came from La Familia Michoacan, a Mexican cartel, altered the course of his life and his family.

continued

"Hockey motivates me, I am (a) 14-year-old disguised as a 91-year-old."

-Stan Fischler. Steven Scheer of Reuters has more on The Maven.

via the NHL's YouTube page,

Watch all the best moments from the NHL on TNT desk crew's emergency game-call for the Detroit Red Wings vs Florida Panthers.

via the Sportico piece,

Amazon will make a minority investment in the company as part of the proposal. It will use its Prime Video platform to offer direct-to-consumer access to MLB, NBA and NHL games, including pre-game and post-game content of its various RSNs on a local basis. The size of the investment and other details have yet to be disclosed.

from Braylon Breeze of The NHL Zone,

The city of Seattle appeared to have loved hosting this year’s Winter Classic, but for the rest of the country, another all-time low was hit in the viewership department.

Monday’s Winter Classic was between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Seattle Kraken. These are of course the two newest teams in the NHL, and both come from places that have long been accustomed to not having a team in the National Hockey League. Meanwhile, we also aren’t accustomed to this kind of viewership for the game as the 2024 Winter Classic averaged 1,110,000 viewers across TNT (1.03M) and truTV (76K).

For the third consecutive year, TNT would air the game exclusively on cable, and this time the event would have a later start time with the game being on the West Coast with a 3:25 p.m. ET puck drop. With this, the third period of the Winter Classic would go head-to-head against one of the most-watched college football playoff games in history, the Rose Bowl.

Per Sports Media Watch, this year’s Winter Classic peaked at 1,400,000 viewers right before the Rose Bowl kicked off.

The 38% decline from last year’s game, which was between the Penguins and the Bruins, will result in this year’s Winter Classic not being the most-watched regular-season NHL game of the year for the first time in the history of the event, as the Blackhawks-Bruins averaged 1.43 million viewers on ESPN’s opening night.

continued

from Aaron Portzline of The Athletic,

The NHL and Diamond Sports Group reached an agreement that would allow for Diamond’s regional sports networks, known as Bally’s, to continue broadcasting uninterrupted through the end of the 2023-24 season.

The deal, revealed in court documents filed Wednesday, impacts 11 NHL franchises: the Anaheim Ducks, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning. It also ends those clubs’ agreements with Diamond, some of which extended to 2030, at the end of this season.

“It’s a resolution that we are comfortable with in light of the totality of circumstances,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Athletic in an email exchange. “It ensures that all our teams will be able to continue to broadcast their games to local fans throughout the balance of the season. That has always been our top priority.”

continued ($)

via the YouTube page of the NHL on ESPN,

Stan Fischler has covered hockey as long as anyone. Upon his pseudo-retirement, he moved to Israel to be closer to his family. Stan lives near the northern border of the country and has continued to contribute sportswriting for numerous American outlets, all the while staying vigilant to the war around him. Jeremy Schaap will sit down with Stan Fischler to talk about his story and his life.

Watch below.

via David Kolb at The Hockey News,

After writing four stories about living through a war while covering hockey, ESPN sent a crew to Northern Israel to visit Stan Fischler.

"The Hockey Maven" will run tomorrow evening on The Point on ESPN 2. The Point begins at 6PM.

The feature will likely be available online afterwards airing and then will most likely be shown again in February as part of Outside The Lines.

The story focuses on Stan's life in Israel and how staying immersed in the sport of hockey has helped him cope with living in a country at war.

It features interviews with Stan, his son Simon, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, former Ranger great Mark Messier, and ESPN NHL host Steve Levy.

from Braylon Breeze of The NHL Zone,

Through thirty-two nationally televised games, the NHL is averaging 468,000 viewers across the networks of ESPN, TNT, and TBS. This is up 30% vs. the same point in the 2022-2023 NHL season (359K). With this, the NHL is currently on pace to have its most-watched regular season under the current TV deal.

ESPN, which has the “A” package for the NHL, has currently aired twelve games on its linear network with an average of 551,000 viewers. This is up 27% vs. the same point in the 2022-2023 season (399K). Obviously, a major player in this increase is with the NHL’s opening night audience between the Blackhawks and Bruins, which averaged the largest indoor regular season audience ever for the NHL on cable, 1.431M viewers.

TNT, which has the “B” package for the NHL, has currently aired nineteen games with an average of 426,000 viewers. This is up 31% vs. the same point in the 2022-2023 season (325K).

continued

from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

Fast forward three decades, and it’s all imploding, with TV viewers deserting cable in favor of streaming and leaving teams and RSN operators scrambling to find a future. One option increasingly eyed by teams — especially NHL squads such as the Kraken in search of broader audiences — is what’s been likened to a “Back to the Future” approach of showing games on free channels as in the 1980s and prior.

The difference now being, instead of one or two weekly games, it would be the majority freely accessed. Sounds great, right? Well, there are obstacles. But right now, the current RSN model is unsustainable and as sports fans you should be very concerned.

Here in Seattle, we’re seeing the not-so-pretty ramifications of RSN model demise on two team fronts with ROOT Sports Northwest.

With the Kraken, who are paid an annual TV rights fee by ROOT Sports said to be within the standard $15 million-$30 million for NHL teams, they haven’t grown their product as well as they’d like. We’ve mentioned previously that Kraken ticket demand has lagged on online resale exchanges, reflecting a lack of demand that goes beyond a poorly performing team.

A great way for any new team to increase interest is through television. But with fewer people willing to pay for packages that include ROOT Sports, the “eyeballs” on Kraken games haven’t been there.

more