courtesy The Windsor Star sports blog
Same time, different channel.
The reality is that even though Rogers Sportsnet has replaced TSN and CBC as the national NHL broadcaster in Canada, little else will appear to be different other than some nights, you’ll find the game at a different location in your TV listings.
For the time being, Saturday Hockey Night In Canada doubleheaders will continue to air on CBC, though Rogers will be handling the production duties.
Sportsnet will carry national games each Wednesday and on Sunday nights, a new feature, Hometown Hockey, will air on City-TV with Ron MacLean serving as host. Each of the 25 Sunday-nights will be hosted in a different Canadian city, beginning Sunday from London. Windsor did not make the cut.
In total, 540 regular-season games will be broadcast nationally over nine networks – CBC, City, Sportsnet (East, Ontario, West, and Pacific), Sportsnet ONE, Sportsnet 360 and FX Canada.
Sportsnet has exclusive Canadian broadcast coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Stanley Cup final, NHL All-Star Game, NHL draft lottery, NHL draft, and the NHL awards. Sportsnet also holds regional packages featuring 16 Toronto Maple Leafs games, as well as Calgary Flames, Montreal Canadiens and Vancouver Canucks broadcasts. In total, 56 Leafs games will be carried by Sportsnet.
For the most part, the same faces will bring you the action. Sportsnet’s national play-by-play roster includes Bob Cole, Jim Hughson, Dave Randorf and Paul Romanuk. Romanuk and Randorf will share regional telecasts of Leafs games, while Rick Ball (Calgary), Kevin Quinn (Edmonton), John Bartlett (Montreal) and John Shorthouse (Vancouver) are the other regional play-by-play voices.
National analysts include Gary Galley, Glenn Healy, Mike Johnson and Craig Simpson, while John Garrett (Vancouver), Kelly Hrudey (Calgary), Greg Millen (Toronto), Drew Remenda (Edmonton) and former Windsor Spitfires captain Jason York (Montreal) handle regional duties.
Heading the list of in-studio analysts and rinkside reporters will be Don Cherry, who will continue to do Coach’s Corner on Saturday nights. Others you’ll see and already know include HNIC alumni Hrudey, Elliotte Friedman, David Amber, Glenn Healy, Cassie Campbell-Pascal and P.J. Stock, Sportsnet regulars Nick Kypreos, Damien Cox, Christine Simpson, Chris Johnston, Doug MacLean, John Shannon, Scott Morrison, Billy Jaffe and Mark Spector. Mike Johnson and Darren Pang make the shift from the TSN studio.
With MacLean shifting to Sunday, the most significant change will be seeing CBC boy-toy George Stroumboulopoulos replace him as host of HNIC Sportsnet regulars Jeff Marek and Daren Millard will handle other hosting duties along with newcomer Leah Hextall. The cousin of Philadelphia Flyers GM Ron Hextall comes to Sportsnet from NESN, where she worked Boston Bruins games.
Through its OMNI network, Rogers will broadcast Hockey Night In Canada doubleheaders in Punjabi each Saturday,
and will try to explain the game to new Canadians via a Hockey 101 vignette that will ultimately be broadcast in 22 languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Italian, English, French, Portuguese, and Tagalog (Filipino), Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Somali, Tamil, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
TSN won’t be entirely bereft of NHL coverage this season. The network will carry more than 130 games featuring regional coverage of the Leafs, Winnipeg Jets and Ottawa Senators.
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/sports/sportsnet-nhl-coverage-wont-be-all-that-different
