NHL Beat Writers

UPDATE: This was originally published on October 3, 2011… since then I’ve kept the Twitter list updated but will probably wait until the season starts to update the spreadsheet. Until then, until these writers on Twitter. /UPDATE:

NHL Beat Writers on Twitter – twitter.com/list/oiler/hockey

If there’s one thing I learned about how the sport of pro hockey is covered, it’s that the guys and girls on the ground with the team every day are invaluable.

They hold a wealth of knowledge that the national writers rely on daily. Without the beat reporters, the national media knows very little.

And this is more so true in hockey than any other professional team sport. That’s why you see so many NHL official team websites running a very news-oriented organization now.

On NHL Realignment

Jakub Kindl celebrates a goal during Detroit's win over the Lightning in Tampa Bay on February 17, 2011. As you can see in the background, there were a lot of Red Wings fans in attendance. Probably 65%-70% of the building was wearing red that night.

It’s fine, I like it. But they’re making the long-term future of the two Florida teams even more of a challenge.

The problem is that the following quote seems to be the generally accepted sentiment behind the idea of putting the Lightning and Panthers in with the Northern snowbirds (here put in to words by The Globe & Mail’s Eric Duhatschek):

The idea of tucking the Florida-based clubs into the same conference as teams in the Ontario-Quebec corridor is brilliant, too. It gives all the snowbird Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators fans more chances to buy tickets when they’re wintering in the Sunshine State.

This is so far from brilliant. All selling tickets to fans of the opposing teams does is continue to feed Crack to the sales and marketing offices of these two Florida franchises. They need to move beyond this quick fix.

Sure, they will still sell some tickets to Leafs and Sabres fans, but they also need to charge a ton for them too and to do that the Florida franchises need to build the demand / supply ratio up high enough that snowbirds can’t walk in off the street and find tickets. Also, there’s a problem in these Florida markets of season ticket holders selling their tickets to these premium games to snowbirds and pocketing the money. So it’s on the fans there too.

The focus has to be on building their own community, their youth hockey and their season ticket base.

But right now with realignment, the NHL just upped their product.
It’s on the Florida franchises now to resist the urge.

Bring Hockey Night in Canada to the United States

Puck the Media on the NHL Network cutting away too soon from CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada:

“…for viewers in the United States, that was not the case. Within less than 60 seconds of the game’s end, we were abruptly sent to NHL On the Fly, which gave hardly any recap from Brian Duff and Mike Johnson and moved on with the typical show they had been doing for NHL Network viewers in Canada, no doubt more likely tuning into, you know… Freaking Hockey Night in Canada! It was confusing, disappointing, and flat-out unacceptable, and here’s why:

Steve Lepore then goes on to make his case on his blog.

But I don’t think he goes far enough. So here’s my case.

HNIC is a national treasure in Canada. Yet most American hockey fans are shut off from it.

• Not only does NHL Network US cut away too quickly/frequently, but a HNIC game is no longer guaranteed to be the NHL Network US Saturday night game. We (US viewers) have already been without the late HNIC game for years… NHL Network runs On The Fly now at 10pm. And with that we also miss out on After Hours, Kelly Hrudey and everything else.
• HNIC deserves the same treatment as ESPN’s Monday Night Football. TSN gets Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski… so why doesn’t the US get the sport of hockey’s premiere coverage? Agree or disagree with Coach’s Corner, but everyone watches it.
• The quality of coverage HNIC puts together is unmatched. Versus/NBC can’t touch it’s level of production. Just something as simple as watching the 6:30pm warmup show and live on-ice lead-ins to each of the 7pm games builds a level of excitment that no one else duplicates. Top to bottom, the whole night should be available to the US market.
• HNIC’s produced pieces like Elliotte Friedman’s Inside Hockey are regularly the best in the business. The simple fact that most US hockey fans don’t know who Elliotte Friedman is should be a warning sign. He is what Peter King is to the NFL and Freidman’s Monday column is as must of a must-read as King’s is.
• And even HNIC’s on-ice coverage is regularly better. Something as simple as having their cameramen follow the game better goes a long way to the US viewer who has “can’t follow the puck” problems.

As a US resident and NHL fan, I demand better access to HNIC. I shouldn’t have to go online to catch up on what I missed on Saturday night.

Make Saturday night as important to some US families as it is to Canadian ones.

Waiting for licensing, not technology

Great quote here about how live streaming innovation is being held up not by technology, but by legality:

If there’s one thing that I learned this weekend, it’s that the technology for distributing live streams of popular content like NFL games is fully baked, but access to those streams is being held back by contractual obligations.

From Ryan Lawler of GigaOm’s story: http://gigaom.com/video/streaming-the-nfl/

For many NHL fans, most of your favorite team’s preseason games are being played right now in virtual darkness. The games are not likely to be televised, are likely to be played in a non-NHL city far away from your home and, because of RSN contract rights, can’t be streamed on the teams’ websites.