Even with three Canadian teams advancing to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Hockey Night In Canada took a few hits from the schedule maker yesterday.
Hockey Night has been denied at least one Saturday night telecast. The second game of the Philadelphia Flyers series against either the Ottawa Senators or Toronto Maple Leafs was moved to Sunday from Saturday because of an Arena Football League game at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia on Saturday night.
Through no fault of the schedule, the CBC has also lost its second largest English-language market with the elimination of the Vancouver Canucks on Monday. A loss by the Maple Leafs last night in the seventh game of their series against Ottawa would take the network's two largest markets out of the playoff picture.
There are also some scheduling conflicts, mainly because the Calgary Flames will be playing some of their games against the Detroit Red Wings in the Eastern time zone.
Tomorrow night, for example, both the Calgary-Detroit and Ottawa/Toronto-Philadelphia series will start at 7 p.m. (EDT). Viewers in the East will see the Flyers game, and in the West it will be Calgary-Detroit.
The CBC will hope viewers get into the habit of watching hockey on Sundays. This weekend, the network will air a Sunday doubleheader, starting with the Montreal Canadiens-Tampa Bay Lightning at 4 p.m., followed by the Flyers series at 7 p.m.
With three of the four second-round series carried on the CBC, TSN is left with one, the Colorado Avalanche agains the San Jose Sharks. TSN isn't facing many conflicts with the CBC schedule. Tomorrow night at 10 p.m., it will air the first game of the Avalanche-Sharks. Both CBC games should be over by then, assuming there is no overtime. The NHL Network will rebroadcast the TSN games the next day at noon.
Hockey shakeup?
Joel Darling, the head of Hockey Night, says he may shake up his broadcasting teams for the second round of the playoffs.
"We had three series go seven games in the first round," he said. "We have three series involving Canadian teams in the second round. So we're thinking of mixing them up a little."
Announcer Chris Cuthbert and analyst Greg Millen provided strong play-by-play coverage of the Calgary-Vancouver series. Don Wittman and Glenn Healy were effective calling the Montreal-Boston Bruins games. Veterans Bob Cole and Harry Neale took some criticism for their work on the Toronto-Ottawa series. It's possible that Neale and Healy could trade places. The broadcast pairings will be announced today.
The CBC pulled in 2.293 million viewers for the Montreal-Boston seventh game. The RDS-Radio Canada French-language simulcast drew a record 1.8 million. That brought the English-French total for the game to 4.093 million viewers. The CBC's audience for the seventh game of Calgary-Vancouver was 2.595 million. For all its games in the first round, not counting last night's Ottawa-Toronto seventh game, the CBC averaged 1.911 viewers a game, well up from last year's 1.695 million.
We like Elliotte Friedman's work on Hockey Night, but, please, no more "those ones." Also, his reference to The Boston Globe's Kevin Paul Dupont as a "Hall of Fame columnist" was a bit much. If Hockey Night wants to make a big deal about Hall of Famers, it could introduce Cole as a Hall of Fame announcer, and the Hot Stove's Eric Duhatschek and Al Strachan as Hall of Fame columnists.
Hockey art show
Leafs or no Leafs, hockey will live in Toronto for three more weeks. Game Faces, an art exhibit opening today at the Contor House (51 Yonge St.) blends hockey memorabilia with art for a terrific take on Canada's game. Anthony Jenkins, a Globe and Mail illustrator, and Larry Humber, a long-time contributing writer and artist for The Globe, have taken old table hockey games and used them as canvases for Jenkins' portraits and Humber's artistic commentaries. The show will run until May 14.