It’s Saturday night and Hockey Night in Canada is on my television. Life is good. Actually, I have to condition that by saying that I think there’s been a definite downturn in CBC’s hockey coverage this year. Losing Harry Neale was a big enough blow, but I think what bothers me the most is how much their coverage has started to borrow from NBC’s Football Night in America presentation. (Ironic that NBC not only "borrowed" the name for their football coverage but also borrowed it for Baseball Night in America the last time they broadcast MLB games.) They’ve changed the set around to have all the sofas and stuff that you see in NBC’s football coverage, they’ve cut down on the amount of on-site coverage they do at the games themselves, but most annoying of all they re-recorded the opening music to their pre-game show just so someone who sounds vaguely like Joan Jett sings it. As I said during the playoffs last year when CBC shifted their in-game graphical style to something resembling NBC’s, a good part of the reason for the longevity and continued success of Hockey Night in Canada is because it is so distinctly Canadian, and imitating Americans sports broadcasts to such a degree just seems to be counterintuitive to me.

The Red Wings are kicking as much butt as could be expected so far this year, and of course no one seems to take notice. Irritatingly enough, earlier this week yet another article came out trying to figure out why the Red Wings have had so many problems with popularity and attendance, and not even the slightest hint that it might have something to do with the lack of fights in Red Wings game in the post-McCarty era is brought up. In all seriousness, is Gary Bettman threatening to whack any US-based sports reporter who brings up the notion that maybe fighting helps to sell the game? Things on the fighting front have been better this year now that Dallas Drake is back and Aaron Downey’s stepped up to throw some fisticuffs, but it still feels like the Red Wings need a more visible enforcer-type figure if they want to start selling out the Joe again. At least I should be able to get up there for a game sometime soon, provided I can find someone in the neighbourhood willing to go up with me.

Also on the hockey front, I’m beginning to wonder if the Red Wings’ dominance of the Toledo market will finally start to wane now that the Columbus Blue Jackets are fielding a decent team. There didn’t seem to much interest in this area when the Blue Jackets started playing, but I thought it safe to attribute that to the fact that the Blue Jackets were an expansion team and have yet to make the playoffs. (That, and Columbus seemed like a strange place to put the team considering that Columbus is outside of the Hockey Belt and doesn’t seem like much of a hockey town. Toledo actually might have been the best place to put an NHL team in Ohio in terms of the city’s natural predisposition to like hockey.) The Blue Jackets have been on a fairly nice tear so far this year, though, so I’m wondering if local NHL coverage will start to tilt towards the Blue Jackets. I don’t think it’s too likely to tilt a lot as long as the Red Wings remain so dominant, but I’m expecting to see many more Blue Jackets sweaters when I go out holiday shopping next month.