A Disgusting Turn of Events

On Saturday afternoon, I was watching Game 5 of the Ottawa-Buffalo series on CBC, a game that eventually went to overtime with the Senators winning the game and the series, heading to their first Stanley Cup Final in team history.

For viewers in the United States, they may have missed the end of this game because NBC, the league's U.S. network partner, switched their coverage over to the pre-race show for the Preakness Stakes.

Overtime hockey bumped for talking about a horse race. Only in America.

A couple of points are necessary here before I rant against this atrosicity. First, NBC's contract with horse racing required it to go to pre-race coverage; that deal was in place before the league signed with NBC. Also, ratings for the pre-race show was nearly triple that of the hockey game.

Now, the NHL needs to realize that afternoon hockey doesn't work like basketball, football, and baseball do in the States. For Sunday's Ducks-Wings game, any viewers that would be on the fence about watching would likely be on ABC, where the Spurs-Jazz series began at the same time.

Us Canadians know that evening hockey works, and there's no reason to think that it won't work in the U.S.. Hockey is not as popular as the 3 major sports right now down south, but it can be. With the right programming.

Secondly, with this pre-existing condition in place, the league should have had the gumption to overrule the network showing its product and schedule the game at night, even if it would then be on Versus.

You can't blame NBC for this debacle; a contract was in place, and ratings would triple if they dumped the overtime period onto Versus. But this incident speaks to a bigger problem for the NHL - ever since the lockout, they have no leverage with the networks in the U.S., and they need to change that, even if that means losing them altogether.

In the end, I'm glad my television was tuned to CBC. Too bad American hockey fans didn't have that option.