When I first heard about the (possibly short-term) marriage between the Kontinental Hockey League and ESPN, I immediately poured hot coffee on my hand just to make sure that I was awake and alive. First off, the thought of watching hockey in any capacity is akin to winning free Taco Bell for life. I barely even remember what ice skates look like. As was stated by Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, “I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.”
ESPN’s coverage will start tomorrow, and will primarily be streamed online via ESPN 3. They’ll have five games through the first week, and the amount of games to be covered each week afterwards remains to be seen.
When you think about this deal, it makes a tremendous amount of sense for both sides. The KHL has been dying to get a piece of the North American market, as it attempts to plant itself as a legitimate rival to the NHL. Until now, they’ve never had access to a massive amount of viewers in the West. As long as the NHL is in lockout mode, the KHL stands to benefit greatly. Many big name players (Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin) have already started playing, and more (Zdeno Chara) are on the way.
And really, what does ESPN have to lose here? They probably paid like $3 for this whole thing. There’s also the added bonus of sticking it to the NHL. Since the last lockout, the NHL and ESPN have had an extremely rocky relationship. ESPN feels as if the NHL spurned them for NBC, and the NHL feels like ESPN’s offers were essentially garbage. It was a true disservice to hockey fans. Sometimes I still aimlessly flip through my channels late at night hoping to see John Buccigross on NHL 2Night. It never happens though. I have to suffice with the 45 seconds that Sportscenter gives hockey every night during the season. It’s understandable though, because they have to spend 10 minutes talking about what LeBron James ate for dinner, and 20 minutes talking about Tim Tebow’s bowel movements (Is Tebow eating enough fiber? Let’s bring in Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to discuss).
The moral of this story is: if you like hockey, this is the first semi-decent thing that we’ve had to talk about in some time.
Photo Credits: SB Nation
