ABSTRACT
I read the essays in this volume during the National Hockey League playoffs of April–June 2008 – which featured not only a scintillating six-game final between the Pittsburgh Penguins (the youngest team in the league) and the Detroit Red Wings (one of the oldest, but the most talented), but also a Pennsylvania showdown in the Eastern Conference finals between the Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers. The very fact of my watching the series is a story in itself, because in order to catch the games on television I had to contact Dish Network and upgrade to the ‘Top 250’ channel package; the ‘Top 200’, alas, does not include ‘Versus’, the third- or fourth-tier cable station with which the NHL signed its television contract after spurning what was apparently an unacceptably low offer from ESPN. Formerly known as OLN, the ‘Outdoor Living Network’, Versus carries the NHL and the Tour de France, as well as a motley assortment of kickboxers, cage-fighters, bull-riders and hunting/fishing shows. This is, perhaps, the outer limit of televised sport in the United States, the ultima thule to which the NHL has been consigned upon being told by ESPN that its perennially low ratings and its disastrous, year-long lockout in 2003–4 did not justify the price it was asking for television rights. (Additionally, in response to the league’s decision to sign with Versus, ESPN has cut its hockey coverage back to the barest of mentions.) Foolishly, I thought I had solved the Versus problem by buying a separate ‘NHL Center Ice’ package from the Dish Network, at a cost of US$140; but alas, that package does not include the later rounds of playoffs, which are televised exclusively on Versus. The final games of the final series were televised on NBC, which (a) is a real (i.e., global) network and (b) is therefore available in places like bars and hotels. Still, for over a month, if I wanted to follow the sport I play and love, it was Versus or nothing.
