Yahoo Sports' Greg Wyshynski held a lengthy conversation with NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins recently, and Collins discussed the ramifications of the NHL's broadcasting/webcasting deal with MLB:
A lot of fans are curious about the plans for the NHL Network. What are the near-term changes for the network, for 2015-16?
We’re going to have new sets, and they’re going to be here in New York [i.e. Secaucus, NJ] rather than in Toronto. It’s a building that was built out for MSNBC but MLB took it over and they’re great facilities. We’re going to have three sets: The set in the NHL Store in Manhattan, where we do NHL Live and make the Player Safety videos; and then two sets out in Secaucus. So we’ll have better sets.
The second thing will be the impact on talent. There’s different talent available in New York than there is in Toronto. There’s going to be more of an opportunity for some of the regional guys that are coming through in the New York area to be part of it. An opportunity to see some old friend like Kathryn Tappen, who’s with NBC now. We used her last year on NHL Network a little, but she couldn’t really commute between New York and Toronto. There’s also interest from some of the other NBC guys and we’d love to have them.
So maybe a bit more of a rotating cast of analysts than in the previous incarnation of NHL Network?
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