"Hockey Night In Canada" News

[Joseph_Gallant]

In an article on the sports section of the network's website, CBC has announced that Bob Cole and Harry Neale will return as the lead announcing tandem on "Hockey Night In Canada". The network also announced that Jim Hughson will join "Hockey Night In Canada" as a play-by-play man, paired with Greg Millen.

While the NHL has released it's full 2005/2006 regular-season schedule, the network has yet to release it's HNIC schedule other than announcing that the first HNIC telecasts would be on Saturday night, October 8th.

Given the NHL schedule that evening, I suspect that there will be two early-evening telecasts (7 P.M. ET): Buffalo at Ottawa (likely being televised only on CBOT Ottawa) and Montreal at Toronto (the rest of the network). In all likelyhood, the late (10 P.M. ET) game will be Vancouver at Edmonton, going to the full network.

At the request of the CBC, the league has again scheduled three games between the six Canadian-based NHL teams one after the other on the same day: This year, it will be January 7th, with Ottawa at Montreal (2 P.M. EST), Toronto at Edmonton (7 P.M. EST) and Calgary at Vancouver (10 P.M. EST). CBC will carry all three games.

 

[STU1NYRF]

> In an article on the sports section of the network's
> website, CBC has announced that Bob Cole and Harry Neale
> will return as the lead announcing tandem on "Hockey Night
> In Canada". The network also announced that Jim Hughson will
> join "Hockey Night In Canada" as a play-by-play man, paired
> with Greg Millen.
>
> While the NHL has released it's full 2005/2006
> regular-season schedule, the network has yet to release it's
> HNIC schedule other than announcing that the first HNIC
> telecasts would be on Saturday night, October 8th.
>
> Given the NHL schedule that evening, I suspect that there
> will be two early-evening telecasts (7 P.M. ET): Buffalo at
> Ottawa (likely being televised only on CBOT Ottawa) and
> Montreal at Toronto (the rest of the network). In all
> likelyhood, the late (10 P.M. ET) game will be Vancouver at
> Edmonton, going to the full network.
>
> At the request of the CBC, the league has again scheduled
> three games between the six Canadian-based NHL teams one
> after the other on the same day: This year, it will be
> January 7th, with Ottawa at Montreal (2 P.M. EST), Toronto
> at Edmonton (7 P.M. EST) and Calgary at Vancouver (10 P.M.
> EST). CBC will carry all three games.
>

It looks like the Saturday before the NHL's Olympic hiatus will feature a single game on HNIC, the RANGERS-Leafs game at 6:00 p.m. ET. The CBC is covering the Games in Turin and probably wants some additional primetime hours that night for its coverage. On the other hand, the past few seasons have included a special weekday HNIC, and I assume that might be Boxing Day (Monday December 26) when the Devils are scheduled in Toronto and the RANGERS in Ottawa. Also, since there will be no HNIC the previous Saturday due to the December 24-25 holiday tradition of no NHL games, there appears to be a Friday HNIC doubleheader on December 23 (Bruins-Leafs and Flames-Canucks).<P ID="signature">______________
Stu Dolgon</P>

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

From the CBC's point of view, it's probably too bad Pittsburgh opens at New Jersey and not against a Canadian-based team. If the Pens had opened against a Canadian-based team, I think the Pens' opener would have been picked-up by CBC.

Of course, had ESPN 2 picked-up their option on the NHL, the Pens' opener would have been an ideal way to open that network's NHL schedule. But it looks like Fox Sports Pittsburgh and whoever holds the Devils' local cable rights (isn't YES taking over the New Jersey Devils' local cable telecasts??) will be the only two networks televising the first game of someone who has been hyped as being a combination of Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux all rolled into one.