ESPN: NHL Deal Would Need “Financial Sense” and “High-Quality Telecasts”

Paulsen at Sports Media Watch has had himself an awesome couple of weeks getting interviews with the real power players in sports.  He continues an interview with ESPN’s VP of Communications Mike Soltys and NHL rights, up in 2011, get brought up:

SMW: Does ESPN have an interest in maybe reacquiring NHL rights down the line? Those are going to be up in 2011.

Soltys: We have been big fans of hockey going way back. As I mentioned earlier, we have agreements with them around the world. It’s got to be a deal that’s going to make financial sense for us, and it has to be something that we can get some of the high-quality telecasts. But we certainly have an interest. And any of those kind of rights that we don’t have, it’s hard to speculate. It depends on many circumstances, when they becomes available, but largely economically, if it makes sense for us, and makes sense for our viewer.

SMW: Would that be a situation where you would want to air the entire Stanley Cup Finals, or would you have that on ABC?

Soltys: A real hypothetical. It’s difficult to say. I think you’ve seen the direction, as you talked about with George [Bodenheimer], with more things being on ESPN than ABC. But we do look on each deal that we’re looking at where there’s an ABC component.