FanHouse VERSUS

There are two bits of information in this report by Sports Business Journal this morning, and both of them are guaranteed to drive purists into a Tortorellian fit of rage. The more benign of the two is that the NHL plans on placing Stanley Cup Playoffs logos inside each of the blue lines during the postseason, in the area where those "Thank You, Fans!" messages were placed after they stole a season from us. There will also be an NHL logo on the ice behind each net. As far as changes go, this one is more irksome than offensive. I'd actually like to see more art on the ice during a game -- as a Devils fan, perhaps a giant arrow that points to the opposing net to help on the power play.

The second bit of news ... well, it's a little more controversial I imagine: The NHL plans on selling "virtual advertising" on the glass above the ice. From SBJ:

The virtual advertising plan, which still has to be approved by Commissioner Gary Bettman and team owners, is patterned after the same type of advertising behind home plate during televised baseball games. Hockey's version will superimpose ads on the glass above dasherboards that protect spectators. The ads, which will not be visible in the arena, will not affect camera angles or live TV shots.

There seems to be a never-ending debate amongst hockey fans whether the NHL "needs" ESPN if it's ever going to be more than a curiosity on U.S. television. Even after the League re-upped with Versus for a three-year extension earlier this year, there was speculation that some deal would be worked out where NHL games could return to one of the WWL's networks next season. They previously ran on ESPN for over a decade.

So did Commissioner Gary Bettman provide a needle for that balloon yesterday on his XM Radio show?

I know, I know: It's impossible to go anywhere today without hearing and seeing celebrations commemorating the 15th anniversary of Gary Bettman's hiring as National Hockey League commissioner. I knew things had gotten out of hand when I saw a Hallmark card that read, "You can't put a cap on how much we appreciate you" and that played the theme to ESPN's hockey game of the week coverage when you opened it.

Over on Deadspin's NHL Closer today, we humorously discussed Bettman's highlights and low-lights (complete with anonymous suggestions of retribution against him from disgruntled fans). Jim Kelley of Sports Illustrated wrote a fairly glowing tribute to Bettman -- including a tale about getting strong-armed by a younger commish years ago -- that has left some in the hockey blogosphere baffled. Or as Michigan Against the World wrote: "The only (comparable) thing I could think of would be a 1946 article in TIME Magazine giving the Hitler era in Germany a B+ because he improved the roads, fought through an economic depression and rebuilt the military." (Evidently, the author is from the Chris Chelios school of subtle Bettman criticism and ancestral sensitivity.)

Some of your FanHouse buddies -- Eric McErlain, James Mirtle, Kevin Schultz, Jon "JP" Press, Earl Sleek, and your humble blogger -- had a rollicking roundtable recently regarding Bettman's first 15 years as NHL commissioner. The question at hand: On a scale of 1-10, with "one" being a total disaster and "ten" being hockey's savior, assess the first 15 years of Gary Bettman's commissionership.

One of the neat little wrinkles Versus has inserted into this year's NHL All-Star Game again is having a goalie fitted with a headset and microphone so they can talk with the play-by-play team in the booth. Last year in Dallas it was Marty Turco, and this year in Atlanta it's Eastern Conference starting goalie Rick DiPietro.

Something tells me DP is going to be wondering whether or not it's worth it. Not long after the opening faceoff, Versus play-by-play voice Mike "Doc" Emrick asked DiPietro how he was feeling after tweaking his hip last night in the Skills Competition after making a great stop on Minnesota's Marian Gaborik (pictured above). Unfortunately, Emrick's question came right around the same time that Western Conference winger Rick Nash let loose with a wrist shot that found the back of the net to give the Western Conference a 1-0 lead.

After the horn went off, Emrick did his best to apologize, but DiPietro waved him off, making sure to let Emrick and the rest of the world that his hip was "killing him".

Sure, it's a gimmick, but after listening to DiPietro for a couple of minutes, I'd be up for more of it.

Last month, Kevin Allen of USA Today -- as close to an idol-maker as we have in U.S. hockey journalism -- penned a blunt plea for the NHL to grovel back to ESPN "with hat in hand," making the case against Versus along the way. One of his most powerful jabs:

One of the major beefs from many players is that Versus is not available in any hotel that they have ever stayed in. If a network isn't on a hotel cable package, is it a real network?

The NHL clearly believes Versus is a "real network"; more importantly, it has identified the currency Versus uses to pay the League for television rights to its games as "real money." The NHL agreed to a three-year contract extension with Versus yesterday, as ratings have increased and the way the network covers the game is converting some non-believers this season. The bottom line is ... well, the bottom line: Comcast is willing to pay the NHL a rights fee (following the New York Times's math, well over $72 million per season) that no other network would seek to pay for the rights to regular season hockey games. The League is already in one public access deal with NBC; it came to OLN for the money in the first place, and it simply can't leave this kind of money on the table with Versus.

But what does this deal mean for the NHL's year-long flirtation with its old mate, ESPN? There was talk last July that Versus might waive its exclusivity clause if the NHL agreed to an extension. Terms for this extension haven't been released, but it would be stunning if the NHL didn't work out a deal that would allow it to share games with other cable networks like the WWL. Who knows: Maybe we'll have our "3 Networks, 1 Cup" postseason coverage after all.

For only the second time in NHL history, the league is holding a regular season game outdoors. Join FanHouse all afternoon long as we live blog the game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres.

4:31 P.M.EST: SHOOTOUT. We start with Ales Kotalik vs Ty Conklin. Wrist shot, iron, score! 1-0, Sabres.

Ryan Christensen vs. Ryan Miller: Deke, to his backhand, he loses the handle, 1-0, Sabres.

Tim Connolly vs. Conklin: Wrister to stick side, save Conklin. 1-0, Sabres.

Kris Letang vs. Miller: Backhand to stickside, SCORE, 1-1. Simply an unbelievable goal.

Maxim Afinogenov vs. Conklin: Backhand in deep, SAVE, 1-1. Conklin makes the stop on his belly.

Sidney Crosby vs. Miller: Crosby stutter-steps. Miller goes for the poke, but Crosby puts the puck right between Miller's legs, 2-1 Penguins win the shootout and the game. Unreal ending. Pens steal two points they have no business winning. No business at all.

4:27 P.M. EST: END OT. We'll have a scrape and then a shootout. Somewhere, Gary Bettman is smiling.

4:25 P.M. EST: Is the ice tilted? Buffalo has been dominating the run of play in this game ever since the start of the second period. That's a real tribute to Lindy Ruff and Darcy Reiger, the head coach and GM who put this team together. I know Buffalo has had some bumps in the wake of losing Daniel Briere and Chris Drury, but I think this team makes the playoffs and gives a high seed a real headache in the first round.

4:21 P.M. EST: The Buffalo pressure is relentless, but Conklin is up to the task as the power play expires. At 2:30, the teams change ends.

ARE YOU LIVE BLOGGING THE GAME? LET US KNOW. SEND LINKS TO: FanHouse@googlegroups.com.

Other than the fact that it's an ongoing negotiation, I have no idea why the NHL is being so damn coy about what's possibly the worst-kept secret in sports television: That the League will be back on ESPN in some capacity next season. Even Bristol has been quick to silence any chatter about it, as John Buccigross found out earlier this season. Maybe neither side wants to be the one to break it to hockey fans that the NHL will be relegated to the ESPN2 ghetto, where it will battle for airtime against Men's Trickshot Billiards and reruns of "Madden Nation" ... both of which could likely grab a larger audience on a Thursday night than a Ducks/Coyotes game.

William Houston of The Globe and Mail writes that Versus -- which has rights to NHL games through 2011 -- is amenable to ESPN re-entering the picture, joining the Dennis Miller/Buck-Hunting Network and NBC as a broadcast partner. Three national networks covering one professional league isn't all that rare in the current sports television landscape; but three different networks airing parts of that league's championship round? Houston prognosticates:

The TV schedule for the Stanley Cup final in 2009 could be structured in a way that relieves NBC of some of the prime-time burden. Versus could carry the first three games. ESPN would come in for the fourth and fifth, if necessary. If the series went six and seven games, they could go to NBC.

Currently, NBC is contracted to cover Games 3-7 of the Finals, with the appetizers airing on Versus. Game 1 of the Finals last season between Anaheim and Ottawa earned a 0.72 cable rating and was watched by 523,000 U.S. households, down 18 percent from the previous season's Finals coverage on OLN. The television plan detailed above would do little to buck that trend; in fact, it creates more questions than it answers.

Well-written column by George Johnson on ESPN.com today, mopping up the last penguin droppings after The Sidney Crosby circus left Western Canada days ago; it heads to Philly tonight for a game on Paul Kelly's favorite network. Besides grabbing a money quote from Calgary defenseman Cory Sarich -- "You're seeing car bombings somewhere else and it's not even a blurb on the news these days because of Sidney Crosby" -- Johnson does an interesting analysis of Crosby's game:

Stylistically, they found out that Crosby is far closer to, say, an in-the-pink-of-health Peter Forsberg than Gretzky, the icon he will forever be compared to. So strong on his skates, nearly impossible to discourage on the forecheck and seemingly hooked up to an inexhaustible oxygen tank hidden somewhere on his being, No. 87, the pin-up poster boy for the New NHL, is that rare combination of intuitive offensive player and relentless power forward.

[...]

But unlike Gretzky, Crosby often absorbs one heck of a beating to make things happen. Gretzky beat teams with quick, lethal injections of genius. Crosby wears teams out. No one worked harder on a sheet of ice than Gretzky. That effort, however, was channeled in a distinctly different way than Sid the Kid's. Gretzky was an apparition; Crosby is a force of nature.

Maybe I'm off the reservation here, but are the words "Sidney Crosby" and "power forward" uttered together about as often as "Mike Huckabee" and "S&M Club?" Maybe it's the "Sid the Kid" thing, or the Penguins getting Georges Laraque to watch his back, or his being dwarfed by Malkin, or the ongoing comparisons to Gretzky ... whatever it is, Crosby hasn't exactly been characterized as Cam Neely, outside of longtime hockey executive Rick Dudley calling him powerful "going to the net."

I think Johnson makes a compelling case for Sidney as a power forward. But can the NHL ever hope to sell him as one to a fan culture that still views Crosby as a fresh-faced "kid" with a predisposition for whining -- albeit an undeniably talented one?

As I type this post I'm watching the Carolina Hurricanes not blowing out the Montreal Canadiens because of a series of stupid saves by Cristobel Huet f(something I'm sure Habs bloggers will say a lot this season) from the comfort of my computer. Last month I gave you a first look at the NHL's video portal (The Habs just tied the game on the PP. BTW, Ward stinks) and after kicking the tires of NeuLion's streaming technology during the pre-season, I decided to ditch Cable TV altogether for Center Ice Online.

The best part is listening to the game in French on RDS and the commercials are not blacked out. I love Canadian TV commercials!

As I maintain a home away from home during the week, this worked out beautifully for me, because after signing up for the online version of the package I received an e-mail confirmation of my order and a rebate coupon for a 50% refund if I was a Center Ice broadcast subscriber (which I am via DirecTV). Since I don't watch any other TV, ditching the cable service was really a no-brainer.

The downside is that I'll miss the games on Versus, but I figure that the cost savings on subsidizing Comcast's Cable's franchise monopoly directly is more than offset by the half-dozen games I get to spend in a sports bar drinking Guinness and downing 20 wings.

Well, back to the game, it's getting nasty out there. And someone better inform Justin "I'm a Bigger Diver than Derek Roy" Williams that the regular season has begun. Eh, forget this game, the Battle of Ontario has begun.

Ta,

While the NHL tried its very best to put on a glitzy, Hollywood-style awards show last night, there were more than a few things that went wrong for the little hockey league that could.

Viewers in the USA may have turned to VERSUS and found themselves watching programming that was anything but an awards show. It turns out there was a fiery reason why ...

A CBC broadcast truck almost caught fire during the network's telecast of the NHL Awards show from the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto.

Technical problems resulted, the worst of which affected Versus in the United States. The overheated CBC truck caused transmission difficulties forcing the U.S. cable channel to cancel its live telecast. Instead, it aired a World Combat League show and carried a tape delay of the NHL show at 11 p.m. EDT.

The CBC had its own problems. Its red carpet interviews were interrupted by a sudden glitch that imposed a newscast from another region onto the telecast.

The technical glitches aside, there were some others issues with the show that need to be addressed.

Get a real host! Ron MacLean is a great studio host for hockey games, but not a great host for a nationally televised awards show. There are plenty of good comedians that would have loved to do the job. With all the revenue the NHL is raking in, couldn't they have sprung some dough for Dennis Leary? Andrew Dice Clay? Mike Myers?

The red carpet: A good idea in practice, but bad in execution. We get a load of Canadian 'celebrities' answering dull questions. Why not grill Martin Brodeur about the blonde chick he was seen with last night? Ask Sidney Crosby what brand of lipstick he wears? C'mon ... throw me a frickin bone, here!

How about some loud music for when certain people talk too much? Gordie Howe, as awesome as he may have been, put half the viewing public asleep with his rambling on and on and on. A blast from a trumpet would have woken the audience up and told the old fart to get 'er done!

The writers need to lay off the drugs, homerism, and booze. How else can you explain Rod Brind'Amour winning the Selke instead of Pahlsson?

For more, check out Mirtle's live blog from the gala.