The Hockey Media

The biggest issue that I had with ESPN when they had the rights to NHL coverage was their heavy bias towards the east. Sure, they would occasionally give us a doubleheader with a West coast game attached, but they always treated that second game as a throwaway. The only team in the two Western time zones that they gave any respect was the Colorado Avalanche. It seemed like they felt that one team (whose water drains into the Gulf of Mexico) would please the entire Western half of the country. I was insulted by that attitude.

A lot of what I saw with ESPN is common practice throughout the American media. For example, Olympic coverage on the West coast is always a three hour delay of an east coast feed (with “Live” still plastered all over everything). NBC, who has had the rights for pretty much all eternity now, does nothing to reach out to the West. When we had a local athlete chasing history in our own time zone during a desirable time, we had to wait three hours. It’s not just sports, either. Just about everything is delayed for the West, and the news tries harder to please viewers in the east.

Comcast has since taken away the television rights from ESPN. They couldn’t be much worse, could they? Unfortunately, they definitely can be. For starters, their ownership of the Flyers has been made painfully obvious by the gratuitous comments regarding that team during every game, even when the Flyers aren’t involved. Their schedules are loaded with northeastern teams, while Western teams are neglected. If the Flyers play the Rangers, that will definitely be the game televised. I am not an Avalanche fan, but I can honestly say that I miss that insulting crumb that ESPN used to give us.

It's not just Comcast, but Comcast is certainly the most influential media source for the sport. Before I continue, let me explain something that Comcast has done differently than most of the media. While the tendency is to divide the country by time zones and to give the eastern time zone the best treatment, Comcast has said, “Screw you” to the southeast (a market that I don’t normally respect) so that they can justify treating Chicago much better than they deserve. For all practical purposes, Comcast turned the NHL into the NEUSPHL (northeastern United States pseudo-hockey league).

Many people predicted that the Canucks would win the Stanley Cup, and that got them one game on the schedule in the United States. Now that they won the President’s Trophy, came out on top in the Western Conference, and came up one game short of the Stanley Cup, can you guess what Comcast is giving them? A second game. While I don’t want to force an alliance, I’m sure that many fans of teams such as the San Jose Sharks will join me in my hatred of Comcast’s blatant favoritism of the northeast.

Before the last playoffs started, I ranted about how the Canucks are treated the worst by the media because the lone West coast Canadian team is the single most difficult to market to the northeast. Eventually, the Canucks had to face a northeastern team in the Final. That team was the Boston Bruins. It was obvious that the media was going to be absolutely horrendous for that series. What’s even worse is that despite my hatred for the media’s over-the-top east coast bias, I still might have underestimated how bad things would get.

For starters, the media made a hard push to convince everybody to look for the bad in the Canucks and simply ignore anything bad coming from the Bruins. Embellishment became a big story. I’m not going to lie, the Canucks played the corniest hockey that I have ever seen from them. Due to the nature of the hockey media, the Canucks at their worst is the only exposure that most Americans have had to the team.

Getting back on topic, not all Canucks “dives” were really dives. Henrik Sedin was stretching out his leg after most of his falls to the ice. It seems obvious that an injury was making it legitimately easy to knock him over, but the media had people looking for dives. The Bruins were just as easy to knock over in the series (Tim Thomas was rewarded for the most embarrassing dive in the series), but nobody second-guessed any of their suspicious falls. It hit a low point when the desire to see dives from the Canucks convinced fans to boo Mason Raymond after Johnny Boychuk broke his back. Obviously, the fans criticizing the Canucks for diving were seeing dives that weren’t there.

Two games earlier, The Canucks’ Aaron Rome delivered a hit that resulted in a concussion to Nathan Horton. The only thing that anyone could find wrong with the hit (except for a “jump” that the replay disproved) was that it was late. The injury to Mayson Raymond occurred when Johnny Boychuk used his stick to put Raymond into a vulnerable position and then shoved him into the boards without the puck anywhere near the play. If you hadn’t seen the plays to which I’m referring, Boychuk’s hit was an unquestionably dirtier play than Rome’s. After Raymond’s injury, the media kept making Horton’s injury the story of the series, and a reason that everyone should be pulling for the Bruins. After the series was over, they reported that Rome hadn’t apologized enough (Did Boychuk even apologize to Raymond?) before they had given us a single status update on Raymond’s condition. We have since learned that an update on the condition of a Canucks player is the same thing as using an injury as an excuse for losing.

I don’t want to throw around baseless accusations, but I have to wonder about something. The media can clearly influence the fans. Since officials are also human, the media could potentially influence them as well. With the extent of the media’s bias, I don’t think that there is any question that if the officials had paid attention to the media, they would have likely been swayed in favor of the Bruins. Due to the influential nature of the media and the human nature of bias, it would be highly unethical for officials to pay attention whatsoever to the hockey media. While the media’s influence certainly would have helped explain some of the iffy decisions that were made during the series, I would hope that the officials have enough common sense to steer clear of their antics.

I’m not going to go into every detail of every mistake that the media made during that series, but I would like to point out one more. After game 5, the Canucks tried a play specifically designed to work against the opposing goalie, Tim Thomas. It worked, and the Canucks took that game. Afterwards, the media was talking to Roberto Luongo (the Canucks’ goalie) and about Thomas (for some unknown reason). Luongo said that the play in question would be an easy save for him. Taken in context, he was talking about his style rather than ability. He even made sure to say that things that are difficult for him would be easy for Thomas. The media brought just one part of the entire comment to the public. They portrayed Luongo as incredibly arrogant for calling out Thomas even though he never so much as implied that he is better than Thomas.

After the media turned as many people as they could against Luongo with their actions, they started hounding him. You could tell that he lost his composure. While Luongo had a couple of horrible games in Boston, it wasn’t the Bruins that got the best of Luongo. It was the media. While I will not blame the media for Luongo not showing enough mental toughness to brush aside the mistreatment, I can’t help but wonder how the series would have played out had the media acted in an ethical manner.