Dear NHL Television or Radio Personality,
I appreciate your service in bringing professional hockey to fans across North America and around the world. Your knowledge and insight is a valuable source of commentary to the consumption of the sport. That said, could you please please PLEASE stop with all the incessant Olympic talk.
I was watching Sunday's early broadcast between the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks, a highly desirable matchup to view, when I noticed something. Play-by-play man Doc Emrick felt the need to spend the entire pregame as well as the beginning seconds of the actual game to mention every single player involved that would be heading to Russia in February. I was so fed up hearing about it that I had to mute my TV through the entire first period and try again in the second. This isn't the only broadcast in which this has been done either.
I get it: the rosters for Sochi have just been released earlier this month, we're all excited, NHL players make up the majority of the players on those teams (Hey! Who would've thunk it!), and it presents a fun angle to spin any particular game. The problem is that it has absolutely nothing to do with what goes down on the ice until we hit the Olympic break.
I don't mind a passing reference here or there but trying to make the Olympic selections relevant at every turn is obnoxious to no end. No more "David Backes and Ryan Kesler will be suiting up for Team USA in 20 days, but no love lost between these two tonight!"; no "Tuukka Rask faces off against Jonathan Quick, a battle we will be eager to see in Sochi next month"; stop the "Paul Bissonnette certainly showed he's fired up about his snub by Hockey Canada en route to 3 minutes of ice time and 27 minutes in penalties". Whatever you think is happening isn't happening. It doesn't. Effing. Matter.
Those of us who pay more attention to hockey than our wives, husbands, kids, fatally ill fathers-in-law, and dogs we strangely haven't seen in a month or so know very well who will be fighting for gold come February 12th. Those of us who can't pick Jonathan Toes, Zidayno Chara, or Teamoo Salami out of a lineup probably don't care anyways as long as the homeland brings home the bacon (no pun intended). We won't remember Phil Esposito inaudibly grumbling anything about these guys on 970 WFLA anyways.
Anyone who plays or has ever played the sport is taught very early on to leave everything on the ice because, for 60 minutes, only one thing is important: the win. As professionals, the players in the NHL know this all too well. Anze Kopitar isn't going to take a run at Semyon Varlamov's noggin so that he hopefully won't have to face him in the prelims. Tomas Plekanec isn't going to have an identity crisis because fellow countryman Jaromir Jagr throws a Czech (pun absolutely intended!) on him during a Tuesday night matchup. These guys are professional athletes at the most elite level and have the wherewithall to understand the difference between league-play and a two-week international competition. Hows about you step up to the faceoff dot and act like professionals too?
We live in an era with this thing called the internet which means if I, say, wanted to explore Olympic rosters, all I would have to do is go here. Or here or here or here or here or here. You could seriously talk on the air about anything else, aside from Slurpees since that's been done to death, and it would be more interesting and informative. Better yet, talk about the game that is happening right in front of you. I know, what a concept! I don't watch hockey to dive head-first into a journalist dung-heap; I have Fox News for that.
Let's stay focused here, boys.
Respectfully yours,
DeaconDangle
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