The Illegal Curve Hockey Show is thrilled to announce that we have reached an agreement to bring our talents to Sports Radio 1290 (http://www.sportsradio1290.com) in Winnipeg.

Effective Saturday November 6, the comprehensive hockey coverage you have come to know and expect from The Illegal Curve Hockey Show will be available each and every Saturday morning from 10AM-12Noon on Winnipeg’s sports leader, Sports Radio 1290.

Stay tuned to www.illegalcurve.com ,The Illegal Curve Facebook page (www.facebook.com/illegalcurve) , and The Illegal Curve Twitter page (www.twitter.com/illegalcurve)  for all your updates about The Illegal Curve Hockey Show.

Illegal Curve’s own Ezra Ginsburg was in the locker room after the game and had a chance to speak to Steve Stamkos of Tampa Bay and Patrick Sharp of Chicago, here are the interviews.

Ezra interviews Stamkos 9/22

Patrick Sharp’s postgame thoughts

Today, we have new evidence of just how bad things have gotten for the hockey folks over at ESPN. As you can see in the video below, the network cannot afford tripods nor dishelved homeless people to hold thier cameras anymore. EJ Hradek is forced to record this video while holding his own camera in an awkwardly MySpace kind of way at home in his room. Pictures are expected to surface sometime later this week of Hradek using his own bathroom mirror to take full body shots of himself for use on his MySpace profile. 

Watch the hilarious video here.

E.J. knows his stuff but apparently he doesn’t know any people! Man, couldn’t someone have held that camera for him?  That’s like the classic self-picture that you can see all over Facebook and MySpace. 

Additionally, the IC Crew is also very excited to have Sean Gordon of the Globe & Mail on the show tonight.  Gordon covers the Montreal Canadiens for the Globe and in the team’s centennial season, there has been anything but a lack of stories surrounding the storied franchise.

You can listen to the broadcast at 8pm CST live by clicking here or if you live in Winnipeg you can tune in by listening to 92.9 Kick FM on your radio.

As well, if you have a question for either of our guests, drop us a line in the Illegal Curve Mailbag and we’ll do our best to get to it.

We hope you tune in,

The IC Team

On the first point, CBC Sports boss Scott Moore says the fat has already been cut at HNIC through travel reductions and behind-the-scenes stuff. In fact, he says HNIC came in under budget after trimming.

But what about all those regional telecasts on Saturday nights? Surely, they don’t help the bottom line considering how much they add to costs.

Well, Moore says, in fact they do add to the bottom line. “The regional broadcasts have added from 100,000 to 300,000 viewers a night,” he says. “Without the extra Montreal Canadiens games, we would have less revenue because of lower ratings.”

Read his entire post here.

Good news for hockey fans in Canada and those in the U.S. who live on the border or subscribe to the NHL Center Ice package.  Hockey Night in Canada is the best hockey broadcast out there, and I really don’t think any other broadcast comes close.  In reality, HNIC drives the revenue truck for CBC and reading the above is only good news, as this means the network won’t cut the regional broadcasts that spare many of us from late March Leafs games.

To reach us in studio, please do so by emailing drew@illegalcurve.com.

We hope you enjoy our radio debut, and as always feedback is welcomed by all of us.

Thanks for your continued support of www.illegalcurve.com

When the Hockey Night in Canada crew meets this week to plan for the coming NHL season, two decisions will have already been made.

Jim Hughson will replace Bob Cole as the play-by-play voice for the 7 p.m. Eastern game. And Mark Lee’s workload will be increased.

Cole, who is 75, will yield to Hughson, who will become the lead Hockey Night announcer and, as such, will call the 2009 Stanley Cup final.

As well, a plan to hire a new announcer has been shelved because of Lee’s development as a playcaller.

“Mark did a terrific job at the Olympics and I thought he improved as a play-by-play hockey guy last year,” said Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports.

Read the entire article here.

Hughson and Lee are both very good play-by-play announcers so viewers won’t be disappointed with their increased workloads.

Mark Moore writes at the Hockey News online site that “relocating teams from Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta and South Florida to Winnipeg, Quebec City, Halifax and Southern Ontario would give Canada 10 teams, or one-third, just as it had in the Original Six era.”

No one can dispute the Canadian economy is strong and is all but fueling whatever growth the NHL is experiencing right now. But we’re a long way away from teams in the lower 48 up and moving. Sure, a team may find its way to a suburb of Toronto in the next decade and there would be worse places to put a team than Winnipeg or Halifax (from a selling tickets point of view, not when it comes to travel.) But the NHL isn’t pulling up stakes any time soon, unless it’s to Kansas City or Las Vegas, American cities who either have a spanking new arena or are in the process of getting one.

Taking a team out of the U.S. and moving it to Canada isn’t going to get the NHL on ESPN any faster, isn’t going to help the long-term growth of this league in the States. The NHL hasn’t given up on teams like the Panthers — who do have plenty of problems but seem intent on figuring out a way to make it a go — Thrashers, Preds and Coyotes. And they shouldn’t. The game is growing in these places, only not as fast as some would like. The NHL is going to, and has been, patient here.

Read the entire entry from On Frozen Pond here.

I understand the point Richards is making but I do take issue with one thing he said.  When he states that the NHL moving north won’t get the NHL on ESPN any faster, that may not exactly be true.  Now, bear with me for a second here.  Say the NHL did move teams back (in some cases) to Canada and the Canadian dollar stayed strong, then the teams would almost undoubtedly be more profitable than the struggling teams in Florida and Atlanta.  With that, the salary cap would increase, thereby giving the big U.S. franchises more money to spend.  As a result the big cities like NY, L.A. and Chicago would have an advantage over many of the other teams in the league; and let’s be honest, ESPN only cares about showing teams that would drive ratings like New York and Philly.  So, moving teams (that probably would not get national coverage anyways)north of the border may actually make ESPN more interested in re-acquiring the rights to NHL games.

It’s a shame only 35 of the Hurricanes’ 41 road games will be on TV, but that’s not the big problem.

After all, three of those missing games conflict with Versus exclusive games. There’s no way around that.

But the other three are missing because FSN South didn’t want them, and wasn’t required to carry them. That’s the big problem.

You have to wonder why the Canes so quickly re-upped with FSN South for a deal that covers only 35 road games and 65 total games. Sure, it was better than the preposterously low 55-game deal that preceeded it, but couldn’t the Canes have done better?

Read the entire entry from Talking Points here.

In this day and age when everything is available on television, I just can’t understand why teams are agreeing to deals with television companies that don’t guarantee that every game will be televised.  Both the Hurricanes and Panthers aren’t showing enough games on television this season and that is a problem for fans in those two areas.

If you want to watch most of the Panthers games on TV this season, that is.

FSN and Sun announced today they will only broadcast 65 of the team’s 82 games this season – down from 70 last season. If you shell out the bucks for the Center Ice package, however, you’ll get 79 of the 82 games.

Read the entire entry from On Frozen Pond here.

In this day and age, teams are only increasing their publicity and television/radio/internet coverage.  For some reason, the Panthers are cutting down on theirs.  You cannot tell me that hockey is succeeding in South Florida.

Earlier this summer, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (‘CBC’) announced that they would not be renewing their rights to theme song for the network’s Hockey Night in Canada (‘HNIC’) broadcasts. The announcement sent shockwaves throughout the hockey world, and was even the subject of ridicule on an episode of Colbert Report (which thus allowed Comedy Central to overtake ESPN in the extent of its yearly coverage of the NHL). Following the relinquishment of rights by the CBC, Canada’s other major sports network, The Sports Network (‘TSN’), swept in like a self-styled white knight and rescued the song from extinction by purchasing the rights from the license-holder.  TSN plans to incorporate the song into its NHL coverage.

 CBC meanwhile, is without a theme song for HNIC. It would be an understatement to say the original song had become a core component of the hockey production, right up there with Ron MacLean’s eyebrows, Don Cherry’s suits, and Steve Armitage’s boyish good looks.  Which is all to say that, whatever song the network ultimately decides to use to open its broadcast, such a song will have very big skates to fill.

 In order to fill these skates, the network decided to run an online contest to find the next theme song. Thus far, over 3500 fans and wannabe composers from across the country have submitted their entries, all of which can be viewed online at http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/home.  The contest runs through August 31^st, and the voting period will begin on October 4^th. 

 And while, just like Gary Bettman and the NHL in the Nashville Predators ownership debacle, we at Illegal Curve haven’t done our full due diligence and examined all 3,500 + entries, the random sampling we have done has, we believe, put us in a position to call attention to the following submissions (all of which can be searched by composer or song name on the Anthem Challenge website):

 The Best Combination of Artist Name + Song Quality Award:

“Hockey Sweater” by Anders Nerman (Vancouver)

Take a songwriter who was named after a hockey player (Swedish superstar and former WHA Winnipeg Jets standout Anders Hedberg), and combine it with a song title named after the best children’s hockey story in history (Roch Carrier’s Hockey Sweater) and you start to think that the odds you might have a good theme song on your hands are pretty high. And you’d be right.

 Hockey Sweater can best be described as HNIC Goes Punk.  Nerman’s take on the theme incorporates an opening with organ-like sounds evocative of the original theme, but then progresses into a high-tempo, upbeat guitar segment with catchy punk-like vocals in the background. Unlike many other entries, Hockey Sweater carries us through a solid minute without petering off. As a result, with apologies to Siskel and Ebert, we’re giving this one Two Sticks Up (wooden, not Synergy, so as not to offend Pierre Maguire).

The 2007-2008 Ottawa Senators Memorial Prize (for the song with the hottest opening that then cools off way too fast)

“Breakaway Rock” by Rob Mazeruk (Winnipeg)

 This entry starts off with a great, up-tempo, guitar opener that would get any viewer in the mood for the exciting Saturday night action to follow (unless we’re talking about a broadcast of a Maple Leafs game, in which case no one should be getting excited unless they’re a fan of the team lucky enough to be playing against the Leafs that night).

 Unfortunately, unlike Bob Dole and Mike Ditka post-medication, this song really only goes hard and fast for about 30 seconds. That said, it would be simple for the song to be extended a little longer and this entry is definitely worthy of significant consideration.

The Jeff Finger Award (For the song that was paid a lot (of views) for questionable reasons):

“Hockey Scores” by Logan Aube (Aurora)

 According to the anthem challenge web site, this entry has received more views than any other entry. I’m not sure why. While Aube certainly has some skills, the theme begins with what sounds like a crying baby, and proceeds into a segment that to my musically untrained ear sounds a lot like gunshots! I’d be surprised if this song wins it all, but stranger things have happened (see RJ Umberger’s 2008 playoff stats).

And Finally…The Nik Lidstrom Award for All-Around Consistency

“Hockey Night Forever” by Michael Kulas (Toronto)

Like Nerman’s “Hockey Sweater”, Kulas’ entry shares a similar horn-based opening leading into an upbeat, punk-like guitar segment. The tempo carries through the entire minute-long submission, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it, like any team quarterbacked by Lidstrom, carried through to the late rounds of the contest.

That’s all for now – I’ll do another review of the entries when the voting begins. And if anyone out there is interested in submitting an Illegal Curve theme song, please do so! First prize: A Buy One Get One Free voucher for a Carolina Hurricane’s home game, courtesy of Illegal Curve’s Drew Mindell.

For Pitchfork, I mean Illegal Curve, I’m Steve Werier

Andrea Goldstein, spokesperson for Canadian sports giant TSN, (think ESPN north of the border) said the network has “no announcement at this time,” but hiring Tortorella is “on our radar.”

Read the entire entry from Lightning Strikes here.

Tortorella would be a perfect fit for TSN.  He is charismatic, outspoken and fresh off coaching.  I see no reason why this deal won’t get done.

I have to admit, my personal favorite is still Hockey Night in Canada.  That is not say I don’t enjoy watching TSN.  In fact, TSN has improved over the past few seasons and has arguably reached equal footing with its CBC counterpart.  Nonetheless, the tradition and “big-game feel” that CBC brings makes their broadcasts my number one choice.

As for the States, having lived there for a number of years, I would like to see Versus add more insider information into its intermission panels.  The station is heading in the right direction, but there is certainly room for improvement.  In regards to NBC, the broadcast is solid but they just don’t cover enough games to vault into my top two.

Let us know your preference by voting in our newest poll.  Also, leave your preference and reasoning for your selection in the comments section and I’m sure we can get some interesting back-and-forth dialogue

This will be the fourth-straight season the NHL and VERSUS will partner to broadcast games in the United States. Crosby will make eight appearances on the network while Alexander Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals superstar and reigning Hart Trophy winner, will make seven.

VERSUS and CBC will both broadcast the season-opener for the Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings on Oct. 9. That game also happens to be an Original Six clash against the Toronto Maple Leafs, who will also be opening their season.

See the entire NHL television schedule here.

Put it this way, there will probably be a game on every night wherever you live.

Don Cherry versus G.I. Joe? Looks like McFarlane Toys will feature its second version of Don Cherry in there 19th series of their successful NHL action figure line. But before I go any further I have a question for the McFarlane team. Why cant we get a CURRENT Bruins figure before you start making second versions of hockey personalities? Don’t get me wrong, I love Cherry and he is basically a legend in the world of hockey, but does he really need two action figures? Anyways, the reason why this is news here is because it will be in honor of his coaching tenure for the Bruins. Cherry coached for the Bruins between 1974-1979, in which he brought three divisional titles and the Jack Adams Award, for being the NHL Coach of the Year in 1976, to Boston. Cherry, in the figure, will be donning a Bruins jump suit, hat and gloves. I know this might not interest everyone but as a collector of Bruins related objects myself, it is something I felt I should throw out there. If you are interested in picking this figure up, I would suggest trying eBay since it has always worked the best in the past for me.

I already have a spot cleared on the mantle.

For full TSN2 details, read the article here.

As for other happenings in the media world this past week:

Marc Crawford was nabbed up by the CBC, and is looking for a partner.  Although I’m not sure what his “lifestyle” choices are away from the rink, a play-by-play man is needed at CBC to work beside him.  According to sources, at this point it is rumoured that he will be working with Mark Lee for the late games this year, but that is subject to change.  Bob Cole and Greg Millen will likely call the early Leafs games, with Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson getting more exposure calling the early games that are nationally distributed.  This is of course assuming that no one other than in Leaf Land would want to watch such a miserable team.  Hmmm…I wonder why the Love Guru tanked at the box office?

Pierre LeBrun will also be on CBC this year, leaving his Sportsnet duties.  Look for LeBrun to make his return to the already crammed Hotstove, as well as the popcorn shrimp buffet across the street from Hockey Night’s Toronto studio.  Let’s hope LeBrun doesn’t have any wardrobe malfunctions during his triumphant homecoming.

Hockey Night is not finished hiring. A new play-by-play voice could be announced in a few weeks. And sources say Pierre LeBrun will accept a job with Hockey Night and ESPN after resigning from The Canadian Press and Rogers Sportsnet.

Read the entire article here.

LeBrun is a terrific hockey writer and has been around the game for a long time.  He has many inside sources and will be a good addition to both HNIC and ESPN.