For the past decade or so, I’ve made a habit of watching hockey highlights on television. I began with the sadly-defunct SportsPage (a triple-A show for much of the Canadian broadcast talent you see on the CBC, SportsNet and TSN), and subsequently watched TSN or SportsNet.
During the winter, these shows almost always open with hockey highlights, so I’d sit down at 23:00 and be done by 23:15 at the latest.
Living in Malta, there’s obviously no Canadian highlights shows on TV. Plus, we don’t have a TV. So, as I mentioned a few weeks back, I’ve been watching highlights on the web (the CBC, mostly).
This has resulted in one subtle shift in my viewing. Instead of sitting back and watching the highlights from all the games played, I must now pick which clips I want to view. What’s the result?
Surprisingly, I watch far fewer highlights. I always check out the Canucks, obviously, but after that I’m kind of left staring at the other results and wondering which I should choose. I lean toward the Canucks’ divisional rivals and Canadian teams, I guess. Plus I’ve been watching a lot of Penguins and Blackhawks highlights, because they have the most exciting young players in the league.
Part of my problem, I suppose, is that I don’t know which highlights are worth watching–besides the score, there’s no metadata. I can’t tell which games went to overtime, or to a shootout, or which featured a fantastic goal or save.
Here’s a feature request for CBC Sports: add rating functionality to each video clip, enabling viewers to judge each clip. That would help me assess which highlights I ought to watch, and which I can give a miss.
What’s the big lesson? Well, there’s isn’t one. What’s the small lesson? A reminder about mediums and messages, and how moving video from the TV to the web inevitably changes our relationship to it.
Having spent the start of the hockey season in Malta, I regularly want to watch NHL (and in particular, Canucks) highlights online. This proved surprisingly challenging. I’ve made a lengthy survey of the alternatives, and here’s what I came up with. I have a relatively slow Web connection here in Malta, and I’m running a MacBook with AdBlock Plus, which can play havoc with Flash-based videos.
Fox Sports - Decent Flash-based videos, though they’re in a popup window and you have to filter for ‘NHL’ before you can see any. They provide short clips and they only seem to cover the American teams. Grade: B-
ESPN - Again, decent Flash player but they only cover American teams and their videos often aren’t up to date. It’s December 3rd today, and they haven’t posted video from yesterday’s games. Also, the clips are on the short side. Grade: C+
TSN - It could just be my connection speed, but this site takes an eternity to load, and performs very poorly in Firefox and Safari on the Mac. The video itself is good, but getting there is too much trouble. Grade: D
SportsNet - The videos simply won’t play on my Mac, in either Safari or Firefox. Under the blank video window I see the message “Flash is required for Sportsnet.ca video.” I obviously have Flash installed, so I don’t know what’s up. Grade: F
CBC Sports - I’ve been watching these for a while, and they’re quite good. Yes, it’s an irksome pop-up window, but the Flash app is very fast, easy to use and the videos are lengthy and well-edited. Grade: A-
NHL.com - It took me a while to find these videos, because a search for “NHL.com video” indicated that their latest video was from 2004. These guys are the winners. They have a fast Flash-based player, the longest highlights packages, and you can choose individual clips–goals, saves, hits and other incidents–from the game summary. Grade: A
My universal complaint about these video sites and micro-sites is that they always disclose the scores before you watch the package. I prefer to watch the highlights with the outcome in doubt. I ought to be able to click a button to hide the scores in the web app.
There’s a lesson for everybody here: always limber up before the end-of-training-camp orgy.
Also, I wonder how long the editor deliberated over the tense agreement in that headline. It’s correct, I think, but it sounds kind of funny if you say it aloud.
If you’ll permit a brief, mid-summer diversion by a out-of-country Canucks fan, I’ve been musing about the future of the Canucks defensive core. At the moment, they have six legitimate NHLers under contract:
Ohlund
Salo
Mitchell
Miller
Bieksa
Krajicek
All of those guys could play in the top four positions. Add to that promising rookies Luc Bourdon and Alexander Edler (and what’s the status of the storied Rory Fitzpatrick?), and you’ve got remarkable depth.
Of course, the team is paper-thin up-front, so I expect they move one or more of these assets to add a scoring forward or two. Ohlund and Salo look the most expendable, though the former has both have a no-trade clause (and Ohlund, as it happens, is my favourite Canuck after Linden).
There have been rampant rumours about a trade with New Jersey. In my experience, it’s rare that the really popular rumours ever become a reality.
The Vancouver Canucks have some strange aversion to free agency. Over the last decade, when July 1 has rolled around, they’ve usually ignored the big targets and signed stick boys for $27.50 and a box of TimBits. There used to be budgetary reasons for their inaction, but that’s far less justifiable in a salary-capped league.
Happily, the teams in the Canucks’ division haven’t been particularly active. Yes, the Avalance got Ryan Smyth (he’s going to get a merry reception when he plays four times in Edmonton, eh?), but that’s about it. The Flames acquired Owen Nolan, but how much does he have left in the tank? There’s no news from the Oilers and the Wild yet.
Canucks GM has been very savvy since his promotion, so I trust that he’s working on something. The team obviously needs two more twenty-goal scorers, and I don’t seem them in the farm system.
Got up at about 3:00am to watch the Canucks struggle in the first period, and then take over to win their first playoff series in a few years. What could be more appropriate than Trevor Linden scoring the game-winning goal?
Thank you, Slingbox Owner Who Shall Not Be Named. I’m going back to bed.
As I write this, it’s exactly 11:00pm and the Canucks and Stars are deep in the second overtime period. Regulation was pretty exciting, but overtime has been the defense-first chess match that everyone expected the series to be.
Dallas has looked the better team through the third period and most of overtime, but things have evened out a bit in the last five minutes or so. The Canucks are down two forwards, so I wonder if that’ll be the difference.
Poor Ryan Kesler. This is his first game since January, and it’s like playing two games in one.
I also wanted to plug my friend Rob’s hockey project, GoCanucks.ca:
GoCanucks.ca is the brainchild of two longtime Canucks fans that love what the Playoffs do to Vancouver hockey fans…Our plan is to launch the most comprehensive Canucks Fan site you’ve ever seen for the 2007/2008 season. But in the meantime, we’re giving away a Canucks Jersey everytime the Vancouver Canucks post a win during the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s a WIN-WIN-WIN situation: Canucks win games, Fans win Jerseys, and GoCanucks.ca wins email subscribers. Go Canucks!
You can give them your email address to win a jersey, or become a sponsor for the cost of a jersey. The latter would be a good fit for, say, a local sports bar.
Note to Rob et al: you should rotate the sponsor logos on the front page, to give them more visibility and return on their investment.
Maggie the macaque is the weirdest and my favourite aspect of TSN’s TV coverage of the playoffs. From Wikipedia:
Maggie was born and hand-raised at the Bowmanville Zoo in Bowmanville. At the zoo, she was trained to spin a wheel. In 2003, several executives and expert panelists from the Canadian sports broadcaster TSN decided that they would “do something random” with their show, and they ended up bringing Maggie onto their broadcasts to make predictions.
The absurdity of Maggie really appeals to me. Often times sports commentators take themselves a little too seriously, and the monkey really serves to undercut that. I wrote about her last year at this time, and she ran the table, beating the three sports pundits with a record of 9 and 6.
I caught the second half of the Canucks-Sharks game today, and was pleased to watch the local team clinch the division title. I was less pleased to hear that Kevin Bieksa left the rink in a cast–no details on that yet.
This means that the Canucks will play the Dallas Stars in the first round of the playoffs. There are no soft teams in the Western Conference, and this looks like a very even match-up. Here’s a bunch of head-to-head stats.
The teams have nearly identical points on the season, and goals for and against. The Stars have the better powerplay, but the Canucks have a superior penalty kill. The goaltending match-up is pretty interesting. Luongo has been among the three best goalies during the regular season, but has never played a playoff game. The Stars’ Marty Turco has more experience, but has been downright miserable in the last couple of post-seasons. The Stars’ scoring is more evenly spread out than the Canucks, so that’s a small Dallas advantage.
I take back my earlier remarks about the Canucks not looking all that promising. They have a lot going for them–inertia, gritty play, great penalty-killing and wicked goaltending. Their one weakness is scoring depth. If one of the Sedins goes down, they’re in serious trouble.
As for the playoffs, I’ll post some predictions before the second season gets underway.
