The Happy Recap: Thanks For Your Patience

The Happy Recap, a phrase we stole from legendary Mets announcer Bob Murphy, is now a new daily (!) feature at Puck the Media, where we recap our day, and talk about a subject that we enjoy talking about, or just post a video that makes us laugh.  This one’s for us, but we hope you’ll enjoy it too.

We hope this video will bring you some join in the absence of our liveblog.  It sure has made mine a little better.  We promise we’ll be ready to go with our liveblogs in time for next week’s Isles-Flyers game, which we intend to be ready for.

Anyway, today was light, compared to Monday, here’s a guide to “Puck the Media” on Tuesday:

NHL Network is the Home For Team USA

Thanks to The Red Skate for posting this, which I missed earlier in the day.  What follows is a press release from USA Hockey and the NHL Network, outlining the benefits of their new three-year partnership.  Here’s some of the basics, then you can read the PR after the jump:

 

• Live Coverage of all U.S. and Medal Round Games in the next 3 WJCs, including the 2011 Tournament in Buffalo.
• Coverage of the Team USA Women’s “Qwest Tour”, featuring matchups against Canada and Finland, for the purpose of warming up for the Olympics.
• All Games in HD.

 

Here’s the whole thing.  Enjoy:

The NHL Tournament of Announcers: Round 1, Match 11, Dan Kelly Bracket: Jeff Rimer vs. Sam Rosen

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you know, we take care of business to start this thing.  Bob Cole moved on, beating Mike Haynes in that first round face-off.  We have yet another one for you today.  It’s a 6-3, featuring Columbus’ Jeff Rimer and the Rangers/NHL Radio’s Sam Rosen.  Voting’s open for 24 hours, Enjoy!

Great Moments From, er, uh, NHL On SportsChannelAmerica?

Your regular scheduled “Great Moments from The NHL On FOX” will not be seen this week.  Instead, here’s some great footage from an even more maligned NHL television entity.  We’re of course talking about the NHL’s four-year partnership with SportsChannelAmerica.

Wasn’t that trippy?  A somewhat younger Doc, John Davidson (!), Bill Clement and Jiggs McDonald talk about the last time anyone cared about hockey in Chicago.  There’s also that “Uh, Awkwarrrrrrd” feeling you get anytime a network’s contract with a league runs out.  People are going to be fired, the sport will live on to a network – in the NHL’s case, ESPN – and they sort of have to talk about it, elephant in the room and all.  Also, The NHL On SportsChannelAmerica theme: Kind of rocked, in a 90’s video game sort of way.

Awful Announcing Attempts to Take Winter Classic Promo Down a Peg

Sometimes, we don’t wanna have to be that guy you know who won’t shut up about how great hockey is, and defending it to all his friends and whatnot.  But here, we have to get up on the soapbox and complain about something.  Awful Announcing, one of our favorite blogs to ignore hockey (and we mean the “favorite” part sincerely), decided to lower itself to talk about the unanimously-declared awesome “Winter Classic II: Chicago Bugaloo” promo.  Instead of go on about how cool it was, how reverent it was to both hockey and baseball, he decided to point out, incorrectly, that hey, that might not have been Harry Caray!

Recommended View of the Afternoon: Brian Burke Makes VERSUS Intermission Tolerable

Videos are often a troublesome thing to post for us.  We’re usually unable to do it unless it’s a YouTube video.  Alas, we are in the situation now.  But, head over to VERSUS’ Website (If it’s not still on the front page, it’s surely on the NHL page by now) and check out Bill Patrick’s lengthy interview with Brian Burke.  It’s worth a watch, and it’s stuff like this that makes us wonder why VERSUS doesn’t give a nightly hockey show a try.  They obviously have the support of high-profile hockey people to help out with providing non-highlight material.  I’m just saying even four nights a week would be nice.  For now, enjoy this.

Why Bob Costas at the Winter Classic is Good

That mug above this typing is Bob Costas’.  He’s done remarkably little actual work since NBC lost the rights to MLB, the NBA and the AFC in the late 90’s/early 00’s.  A horse racing event here, a golf tournament there.  Obviously, the Olympics, and eventually Sunday Night Football, have given him something to do, but there are even rumblings that – with the mass of humanity on that show – he’ll quit that gig too.  

Let’s face it, the man, in his current days, is not a workaholic.  He has every right not to be.  He’s worked pretty much every major event in the sporting world (except the Stanley Cup Finals – c’mon Bob!  Join us more often!) and obviously has enough money to spend his time as he wishes.  

So, when he does choose to do something – and an NHL game at that – it lends some credibility to the event.  That is exactly what his appearance at Winter Classic I did, and is exactly what his hosting of Winter Classic II: Chicago Bugaloo will do.  How do we know he’s in?  Well, if you haven’t seen this promo yet, first of all: Where have you been?  Secondly, listen to the last 10 seconds or so for Costas’ voice, post-jump.