Your Friday National TV Schedule, Announcers and Open Thread
October 2, 2009 8 Comments
12:00 PM, Florida vs. Chicago
National TV: VERSUS (HD)/TSN
Play by Play: Dave Strader
Color: Billy Jaffe
3:00 PM, Detroit vs. St. Louis
National TV: VERSUS (HD)/TSN
Play by Play: Rick Peckham
Color: Darren Eliot
7:30 PM, NY Rangers vs. Pittsburgh
National TV: NHL Network (US & Canada)
Puck The Media 
I’m going to assume–from Strader’s confused reaction to a replay coming out of a break–that they didn’t send the announcers overseas for these games today. Not such a bad thing, considering Billy Jaffe would be just a little tired after reporting in Boston last night.
A good choice on announcers, though–maybe we’ll hear more of Strader on Versus with his Phoenix schedule scaled-back. I like that he knows the entire league. It’s sort of blasphemy to bad-mouth Emrick on this site, but he was struggling last night in Denver. Not like you can blame him too much; it’s probably his first trip west (not counting Detroit) since the Ducks were in the Final.
Not to come out and defend Doc too much, but having Sakic interrupt a ton and all the new players on Avs and Sharks, it was surprising he even picked calling that one. By the 3rd period they got into a groove.
Yeah, I don’t blame Doc, really, but more the way they do things on Versus and NBC. He calls games for the Devils, so he’ll see western teams once, maybe twice that way, and on the off chance that a team like the Sharks gets on Versus, they tend to use their C-team announcers.
I mean, what does Versus have–one or two more doubleheaders the rest of the season? This is why I like the added variety to the NHL Network schedule this year, even if it sacrifices some HNIC weekends.
Here’s an article calling on Bettman to get involved in the Versus DirecTV mess…..
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sports/blogs/Watch-This/DirecTV-and-Versus—The-NHLs-Bettman-needs-to-get-involved-63280342.html
Does anyone here think if he did it would do any good?
I see and hear from the Internet that TSN has a crew in Europe doing the Detroit St. Louis game.
Good for them….
Comcast has enough money to potentially buy NBC, yet they can’t pay for a handful of plane tickets from New York to Europe for the Versus crews.
>>Comcast has enough money
….and doesn’t want to spend much of it……
Apologies to all. I think my earlier post about TSN having a crew in Europe was wrong. They had Miller and McGuire doing both European games in two different countries, so they must have been calling it off a screen somewhere….