Nothing like some comments questioning hockey’s popularity to get its fans to throw down the gloves.
Yesterday, I did a post on Vince Doria, senior VP and director of news, insisting ESPN doesn’t hate hockey. However, the network, which no longer has the rights, doesn’t like it much. 
Prior to the playoffs, you’d be hard-pressed to find much NHL coverage during SportsCenter.
Doria’s views generated an interesting response. Deadspin dinged him for saying hockey “doesn’t transfer much to a national discussion.”
Wrote Patrick Burns:
It’s always funny when ESPN executives innocently talk about “national discussions,” as if national discussions happen apart from ESPN—as if they rise organically out the soil in New York and Deer Isle and Des Moines and Tupelo and San Bernardino. ESPN is the national discussion; if ESPN doesn’t discuss hockey, the nation doesn’t, either.
Meanwhile, I received plenty of comments on my site.
Reilly wrote:
ESPN, stop being a joke. Stop ramming down our throats Tebow, Lebron, Baseball and actually cover a sport like a real journalist would. I could give two SH!TS about Tebow right now or the draft, i don’t care about game three of the Heat/Knicks which the heat should win, I care about a triple OT game in the second round of the playoffs… and I know a lot of people not in NY or WAS did to!
From DRBEAR:
Well of course there isn’t demand. It is as if McDonald’s used to carry hamburgers, then dropped most of them from the menu and just carried one type at lunch. Then they say “of course we don’t carry many different kinds of hamburgers, there isn’t the interest.” To my mind, an all-sports network should cover all sports. If it doesn’t, it’s not doing its job.
LegendofVT chimed in:
Doria is delusional if he thinks that asking the producers of SportsCenter, Around The Horn, and PTI to add more hockey content during the playoffs, after ignoring the sport during the regular season, is enough to bring hockey fans back. There’s plenty of lip service, but nothing that indicates that they’re willing to repair their relationship with us.
Doria, though, did have somebody who agreed with him. Kaz said:
I agree. As a die-hard fan, I almost prefer to read/watch something very home-team-centric. Maybe I am a bit of a homer and only want to here good stuff, but the bad stuff is interesting, too. I have the Center Ice package, but never watch a game other than my favorite team…
Hockey transfers just fine to television, but ESPN wants to give the NHL the shaft just like it used to give NASCAR the shaft. That’s just fine if you think about from ESPN’s perspective. They aren’t going to make more money by playing a few more NHL highlights during SportsCenter. And even with the growth of the NHL on NBC and previously Versus, I do not believe for a single second that NHL growth would be much bigger with rights coverage from the worldwide leader on two channels, national radio, a broadcast network if need be, and online.