Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroBob
The sport might not be "classy." But many of the people involved in the sport absolutely are.
Hockey players and coaches are easily the nicest, best and downright classiest guys I have worked with in my experience in the four major sports. And pretty much everyone who has worked in all the sports will say the same thing.
I agree, I don't mind them being classy off the ice. I just needed to rant about the overuse of the word classy in hockey circles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroBob
NHL Playoff ratings are about the strongest they have ever been. We have pretty much moved beyond the "NHL desperately NEEDS to get back on ESPN" phase. Remember that? So popular a sentiment even 2-3 years ago. I remember debating about it on here. But it's just not a valid idea anymore. (or not nearly as much anyway).
And these super-strong ratings for the NHL playoffs are with some of the media-darling teams all getting knocked out early such as PIT, BOS, DET, CHI. All of those teams are pretty much automatic ratings-generators...and none were in the 2nd round. How much better would the ratings have been if it were DET/CHI instead of PHX/NSH?
NBC-SN still has some growing to do. But they have done a great job and are clearly well on their way.
The NHL vs. NBA ratings comparison will get really interesting if one of them has NY vs LA for the finals while the other gets stuck with something like IND v OKC. (NBA will probably have BOS or MIA...so that will bail them out).
As a Canadian who moved to the USA in the past couple of years, I love versus and now NBC Sports. I've always had access to versus and the NHL network has showed CBC HNIC in the past, so I could watch the games.
I'm not a big ESPN fan because well I'm Canadian and I don't like most American sports, namely baseball and basketball. And football is so broadly covered that I don't need ESPN to get my fix of that.
Also, I don't really care about ratings, if we catch the NBA, as long as we have good coverage so I can watch it, that's all that matters to me. With NBC Sports, now we have that. I just hope they don't grow too much and eventually put hockey on the back burner.