NHL Espn

Thirteen years after he was dismissed as head coach of the Los Angeles Kings, Barry Melrose is going to get another kick at the can as head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Damien Cox of the Toronto Star has the skinny:

It's believed new Tampa owner Oren Koules is the driving force behind the hiring of Melrose, who led the Los Angeles Kings to the the 1993 Stanley Cup final against Montreal. In recent years, the Kelvington, Sask. native has been a featured analyst on ESPN.

Koules, once partnered with former Columbus president Doug MacLean to buy the Lightning before that collaboration broke up, is looking for a marquee name to help sell and market the club in central Florida. Tampa, which won the 2004 Stanley Cup, missed the playoffs this year.

Melrose's hiring will surprise many NHL watchers, as will his salary, expected to be about $2 million per season.

As Cox later notes, Melrose's departure is going to blow a hole in ESPN's coverage of the NHL, much of which is centered around him. Although he took on a lower profile at the WWL when ESPN declined to renew its contract to carry the NHL in the wake of the lockout, Melrose continued to serve as the network's lead hockey analyst, often appearing online beside ESPN.com contributor E.J. Hradek and hosting a regular podcast called The Melrose Line.

One wonders what John Tortorella, who after all is still officially the head coach of the Lightning, thinks about this.

A lot of people around the sports blogosphere like to beat on ESPN. They're the top dog and controlling entity in sports media, like it or not. And whether or not ESPN likes it, human nature dictates that everyone is going to be gunning for the top dog. Just ask the New York Yankees or, more recently, the New England Patriots. So today, to change things up a bit, I'm not going to beat on ESPN. Instead I'm going to focus on the positive.

You might have heard of David Amber. He's a writer for ESPN.com and makes appearances on the TV side of things as well. Luckily for us, he's part of ESPN's NHL contingent. However small and insignificant their television coverage may seem, there never seems to be a shortage of online hockey content. Good for us, no? I thought so. Again, we're focusing on the positive here. But to get straight to the point, Amber frequently styles his online columns as 'Top 10 lists'. You probably know these lists well as they're all over American culture these days. The ones Amber does are similar to what David Letterman does every weeknight but only in name. Amber's are hockey related, composed of fewer jokes and more, you know, analysis and thought. In a tribute to Amber -- whom I've never met but would assume is very engaging -- today I give you ... Drumroll, please ... A top 10 of David Amber's 'top 10' columns!

It's not a secret that I'm no fan of ESPN. For reasons we don't need to dive into here, the WWL has morphed from being the sports fan's best friend, into nothing more than a globe-straddling marketing arm of its broadcast properties -- which means that for reasons of the bottom line, ESPN did its level best for some time to ignore that the NHL even existed.

So when ESPN deigns to acknowledge that hockey hasn't packed it in, I feel the need to take notice. Case in point, the network's viewer-driven contest to determine the "Greatest Highlight". Going up against Boise State's 2-point conversion to beat Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl was Mike Eruzione's game-winning goal against the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Eruzione's goal won with 59% of the vote:



Glad most of the young viewers of ESPN still have their heads on straight.

Elsewhere at FanHouse:
Generation Gap: David Tyree Has Never Heard of Miracle on Ice Hero Mike Eruzione

William Houston of the Globe & Mail reports Wednesday that NBC has a "window of about two months" to decide whether it will have the NHL back for Sunday games and coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals:

The case for NBC renewal is to maintain a relationship with the NHL and keep hockey on the network as a lead-up to coverage of the Winter Olympics hockey tournament in 2010.

The argument against includes low ratings. NBC's numbers at this point last season weren't good. After two games, the average was 1.1 (percentage of the potential household tuned in). After two games this season, not counting the Buffalo outdoor game, the average has dropped to a remarkably poor 0.8. NBC isn't losing money in its profit-sharing deal with the NHL, but it could be earning more by airing something else on Sunday afternoons.

Houston theorizes that NBC's withdrawal from hockey could hasten the League's return to ESPN, but Versus will have more to say about that decision than anyone else since it has U.S. cable exclusivity for the NHL. I'm still thinking one of Houston's previous reports that had all three networks sharing coverage will come to pass; because I believe a return to ESPN is basically a foregone conclusion, and because Bettman and the League understand the prestige and symbolic value of a broadcast network deal -- as poor as the ratings have been.

The Stanley Cup Finals haven't been shown exclusively on cable since 1994; sharing the NHL's greatest showcase between ESPN and Versus, without a broadcast television partner like NBC, would only signal a further retreat for hockey from the U.S. mainstream.

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.

Just the other day, I was telling my father I wanted to call Newark Mayor Cory Booker's office to see if and when ESPN's Barry Melrose would make good on his apology and visit The Rock for a Devils game. Turns out I'm a day late and a delicious Cuban Sandwich from the Prudential Center's Havana Restaurant short: Tom Gulitti of The Record reports that Melrose is scheduled to be the guest of Booker and Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek at tonight's game against the Washington Capitals.

In an ESPN.com video last month, Melrose said that the area around the new Newark arena is "awful," that "the inside and the outside where it's built is pretty humorous" and warned those who dare see a game to not "go outside if you have a wallet or anything else." When his comments were swiftly rebuked by the Devils and the city, Melrose cowered and apologized, embarrassingly admitting that he had never actually visited the arena before labeling it a crime-ridden Thunderdome of lawless thugs. Melrose told Gulitti that he's looking forward to gaining "first-hand knowledge" of the arena and its surrounding area tonight; he also said that Devils fans have been fairly kind to him after his commentary: "No one has been tough on me, so, hopefully, that will continue tomorrow."

It should be a decent crowd, as the Devils will celebrate Scott Stevens's induction into the Hall of Fame and the fact that he ended his career with his leadership unquestioned and his dedication to his teammates respected (unlike some other former Devils defensemen named Scott). But Devils fans, at The Rock, welcoming The Mullet with open arms? Ask a Rangers fan how hospitable NJD fans can be -- even when the Rangers aren't playing them. No, battle plans are being drawn ... and I even have one of my own.

Neil Best, sports media columnist for Newsday, had an interesting little item tucked inside a notebook column this morning that will only continue to fuel speculation about the NHL's eventual return to the WWL (worldwide leader):

Speaking of Versus, what about speculation it would be willing to negotiate away its exclusive cable rights to allow ESPN to join it in covering the NHL in 2008-09?

[Versus Senior VP of Programming] Fein didn't exactly dismiss the notion.

"If and when the time comes, if anyone approaches us on it, we'll have the conversations," he said. "It never hurts to have a conversation."

Indeed. You'll recall it was only a few weeks ago that ESPN's John Buccigross speculated that Bristol was eager to get back into the business of telecasting hockey -- even though his naked speculation was later edited out of existence over at ESPN.com.

One has to wonder if all the complaining has had something of an effect on the folks in Bristol. The work of their ombudsman, Le Ann Schreiber, concerning their abandonment of NHL coverage has to sting, and it's hard to call yourself the WWL when you don't bother to carry one of North America's most popular and oldest team sports.

Thanks to Best for tipping us off to the news in his excellent Watchdog blog.

Yesterday was a joyous one for many hockey fans, as it marked the return of John Buccigross and his NHL column at ESPN.com. Ever since the NHL and the WWL parted ways rather acrimoniously, the Buccigross column has been something of an online beacon for hockey fans, proof positive that not everybody inside the globe-straddling multimedia monolith was out to destroy the NHL.

In fact, yesterday's column more or less confirmed what we'd been reading about for months, that ESPN was very interested in getting back into the business of telecasting hockey. But as Sports Media Watch reported earlier today, it looks like the powers at be at ESPN think Buccigross went just a little too far:

Buccigross, writing the season debut of his weekly hockey column, speculated that ESPN would gain the rights to air National Hockey League games for the first time since 2004.

"NHL players want it, the NHL wants it and ESPN wants it," Buccigross wrote, "NBC and Versus somewhat holds the cards however, so we will have to wait and see; but my guess is yes. ESPN will have a piece of the pie."

That entire portion of the article has now been omitted.

Huh? Every once in a while, Bill Simmons likes to drop hints that he's not exactly completely free to write whatever he wants in his Sports Guy column. But in those missives, Simmons seems to hint that he's usually stopped well before the point when the pixels hit the screen. But what's puzzling here is why in the world ESPN would even bother. As SMW itself noted last night, earlier this Summer Sports Business Journal reported that ESPN and the league had already had preliminary discussions about airing games on ESPN2, where the league once comprised a considerable share of the programming.

Like Awful Announcing noted, it's almost like Buccigross thinks like a blogger now.