The New NHL

In all honesty, I was mostly bored by tonights NHL action. Sure, the Oilers won, Hemsky looked great, and Pronger knocked out Dan Hinote (they never showed it again on replay, but it looked like a Pronger forearm to Hinote's head), but for the most part I found the game slow and tedious. I thought that after a year off, roster changes on the Oilers, and new rules meant to open up the game, I would fall in love with hockey again. Turns out I was wrong. I feel exactly the same way about hockey as I did before the lockout: meh. Perhaps it will grow (back) on me, but for now hockey is still my 3rd favorite sport, behind American football and baseball.

One other thing I didn't miss: awful colour commentary. What is the deal with media oulets using old hockey players for colour commentary? Didn't they listen to these guys for years while they were players, spouting off cliche after cliche? I can think of two guys I would like to see in the announcers box: Brett Hull and Jeremy Roenick. The rest of them? No thanks. I couldn't stand Bill Ranford as a player. The thought of him doing colour commentary for the Oilers all year has just made me puke in my mouth. I can already guess what the two biggest cliches of the year are going to be: 1) "You can't do that in the new NHL", which will be used anytime something happens that the announcers can't explain, and 2) "In the old days, we used to x, y, z...", which will usually, but not automatically, precede cliche 1. Oh sorry, there is one more, from the players: 3) "Well, we are just glad to be back on the ice. We missed this game just as much as the fans." Don't even get me started on how much bullshit that one is.

And while I am complaining about media coverage, why is it that Edmontonians had to miss the first five minutes of the Oilers game so that they could watch the end of the Flames game? I know TSN could cut out, because every once in a while they would bring up a second box with the Oiler game on it. I hate crap like that. If you advertise local coverage, provide local coverage. No one in this city cared to watch the last three minutes of a Lemaire-Sutter coached game. I see those two guys on the bench, and I am worried that the last three minutes might end up like an NBA game. That is to say, a half-hour of stops and starts to get throught three minutes of an already decided outcome. Seriously, is there some way to get someone at TSN fired over shit like this? Bloggers got Dan Rather fired. Can't we, nay, shouldn't we, destroy the life of some hockey producer?

I have always thought that there must be a market for what I would call "honest sports commentating." What I mean by that is just having two guys call a game the way that two guys watching the game in a living room would call it. Swearing, yelling, insults, total lack of objectivity. The whole works. Is there some way to pull a Christian Slater and provide honest, pirate commentating on the net? You could podcast or audioblog a game, but it wouldn't be live. I mean full, unedited, live sports commentating from two to three die-hard fans. That would be awesome. I call dibs on that idea, by the way. If someone knows how to do that, they so totally have to tell me and not steal the idea for themselves. Karma, dudes. Karma.