Let's have a quick chat about ESPN's playoff broadcasts
Happy Monday, let's talk about something that's been on my mind and maybe yours.
Much like the Dallas Stars, I had some Game 1 technical difficulties.
We had a 20/20 ready to publish on Sunday morning, but it never went out and I’ve since figured out what happened. Because it doesn’t make much sense to publish a Game 1 piece on the morning of Game 2, it’ll live in exile and we move on.
Anyways, there will be a 20/20 late tonight after Game 2 Stars-Wild, the one benefit of a ridiculous 9:50 ET (8:50 locally!) start for me is that I'll be able to return home from my beer league game, fast forward through intermissions and catch up pretty close to live in the third period.
But before we get to tonight’s game, I want to chat a bit about something that’s been on my mind after watching the opening weekend of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
ESPN’s coverage has been struggling.
I’m usually pretty careful when it comes to media criticism, and that’s intentional because I know the job isn’t as easy as it looks, and there are lots of times some of the decisions and repercussions that fall on behind-the-scenes decision makers that won’t have to answer for it.
But ESPN, now five years into a seven-year deal as the NHL’s A-package rights’ holder (Turner has the B package), has struggled to deliver a product that connects with either established hockey fans or new, equally important, viewers that only jump on during the playoffs.
Even worse, for me, it takes me out of the game.
I think that’s why I’m writing this. While there are other broadcast quips or complaints I’ve had or heard before, those are usually stylistic ones. The ESPN problem, however, isn’t stylistic unless you count being unprepared as an intentional style.
After the first Sabres playoff game in 14 years Tage Thompson was interviewed by Leah Hextall and asked about winning a playoff game with the only NHL franchise he’s ever known. A sweet sentiment, but a false one since Thompson was rather famously a first-round pick of the St. Louis Blues and played NHL games there before being traded to the Sabres.
On the intermission Mark Messier, PK Subban, and Steve Levy joked about how they were unable to say the name of Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. I know Messier and Subban got most of the heat on social media for this, but I was actually more disappointed with Levy, a pretty good play-by-play caller in his own right, for allowing the broadcast to look that disheveled.
Finding the player pronunciations isn’t difficult, in fact on the NHL Media site they have a guide, which I’m just going to embed right here for anyone else to look at.
The league also has the audio guide for all the names as well, and here is link to the audio guide for the Sabres.
We also are talking about the starting goalie for the Sabres, someone you know will come up in the broadcast discussion, this isn’t a fourth-liner that scored a big goal and surprisingly joined the spotlight.
It looks even worse when ESPN frequently gets outperformed by Turner’s broadcast. While there are some elements of the TNT broadcast I don’t particularly love, they’ve done a good job finding a way to connect with both new fans and those that have been dialed into the NHL all season. I think Liam McHugh deserves a ton of credit for this and while there are som bigger personalities on the panel, his work as host really allows TNT to both be fun and professional at the same time.
When a game is on TNT, I’ll still watch it on American television. When a game is on ESPN, I tend to switch over to the Canadian broadcast, or for the first-round, one of the local ones.
The most frustrating part of this is that this is Year 5 of the broadcast rights for ESPN, it hasn’t improved, and actively detracts from my viewership of the game. I’m going to watch either way, but what about the people that won’t?
You’re absolutely spot on with everything you pointed out in this post.
There’s really no excuse for how poor ESPN’s hockey coverage is—it genuinely makes the game hard to watch.
If the Stars somehow get past the Wild and move on, I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. YouTube TV doesn’t include ESPN+, and the coverage is so bad that I can’t bring myself to pay extra just to watch a few games—even when it’s my all-time favorite team, one I’ve followed since they moved to Dallas.
Admittedly, I haven’t taken the time to confirm whether the playoff games will be on ESPN or ESPN2. But if they end up being streaming-only, I won’t be watching.
The NHL has done the sport a real disservice with this ESPN partnership. I struggle to find a single positive in their coverage.
Meanwhile, the Turner broadcasts are fantastic. The chemistry and repartee—especially with Liam McHugh leading the desk—are exactly what hockey coverage should be. I enjoy everything about their presentation.
It increasingly feels like Gary Bettman is the kind of leader who digs in, no matter how flawed the position. Whether it’s the playoff format or the ESPN deal, that stubbornness is starting to hurt the game.
He deserves credit for the league’s growth—but it’s time for new leadership.
I had a similar frustration, but at the pivotal point in that Sabres game, ESPN was fumbling the actual broadcast as well. After the Tage Thompson tying goal, ESPN was showing a replay of the play developing, and cut the replay off before it got to the goal to return to live action, a couple seconds post puck-drop (I know you've campaigned for longer breaks post goals to give better analysis, but the window is the window, they should be prepared for it). Then immediately after the next whistle, they return to finish showing the replay of the goal, and then after the replay the camera goes back live to a mini-brawl on the ice, seemingky stunning the broadcasters.
All that to say, you're bang on, and its noticed by people outside of the media world too.