The Two-Line Pass

Man I love watching Ranger games.

Well one thing of which the NHL cannot be accused is being unaware of which side its bread is buttered on.

The new national TV schedule, released today, certainly confirms that.

From the NHL press release:

VERSUS opens its fourth year of NHL coverage with an international doubleheader on Sun., Oct. 5, when the Lightning and Rangers face-off in Prague at 12 p.m. ET, followed by the Penguins-Senators match-up in Stockholm at 2:30 p.m. ET. VERSUS’ schedule includes a season-high eight appearances by the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Minnesota Wild, New York Rangers and Penguins. The Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals are all making seven appearances each. In total, VERSUS will televise 56 regular-season games, All-Star weekend, games in each round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final. Every game on VERSUS is produced and shown in HD where available.

After NBC launches its NHL coverage New Year’s Day with NHL Winter Classic 2009 from Wrigley Field in Chicago, the NBC NHL “Game of the Week” drops the puck on Sunday, Jan. 18 when the Penguins host the Rangers.

By my count, that’s 11 nationally-televised games for both Penguins and Rangers, even before NBC makes any decisions about which games they’ll air (those are made 13 days before they’re shown) or the playoffs begin. For some reason, those two teams also show up on the CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada a combined 13 times and five more on TSN.

A full breakdown of Versus games by team follows (unabashedly stolen from Wyshinski and reformatted, though it should be noted because this is all subject to change because — surprise — Versus dicked the whole thing up on its website):

Sabres and Wild: 9 (huh?)

New York Rangers and Penguins: 8

Bruins, Red Wings, Flyers and Caps: 7

Devils: 6

Avalanche and Blues: 5

Stars, Islanders and Lightning: 4

Blackhawks, Canadiens, Sharks and Maple Leafs: 3

Thrashers: 2

Ducks, Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Panthers, Predators, Senators, Coyotes and Canucks: 1

Flames, Oilers and Kings: 0

How do the Thrashers get more than the Ducks, Senators or Canucks?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Sum-sum-summertime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.