The Hockey Show - Episode 728

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, has escaped! Our hosts will be out in the community tonight as they make a trip down to the Hockey For All Centre in west Winnipeg to check out an intriguing matchup between the ACHA's University of Jamestown Jimmies and the MFHL's Winnipeg Ice! As far as we can tell, this will be the Ice's first dance with a university team, so this could be fun as the hosts will look for interviews post-game in between talking about hockey! It's the first show out of the studios in a while, so join us down at the Hockey For All Centre for the game and the The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Some will say the image to the left is an accurate description of our two hosts, but Teebz and Jason will make their way down to the Hockey For All Centre where they'll set up the remote gear and chat about the ongoing insanity at Rogers Communications with respect to Elliotte Friedman and Kevin Bieksa potentially being gone from their broadcasts. They'll also talk about the recent shutdown of Victory+ and how the broadcasting landscape has changed in hockey. They'll also update everyone on the score in the game between the Jimmies and Ice, and they'll see if they can flag down a few players and/or coaches for an interview on the show tonight. It's always fun heading out to a rink for a live show where we can meet talented people, so make sure you're tuned into The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason talk insane decisions and bad business, they'll chat with some of Manitoba's best players, and anything else they can squeeze in during their first on-location show exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Heading Home

The road trip officially comes to an end today, and I would say that I got a lot done in my visit to Thunder Bay. There's always work to be done no matter where I go, but there were some good laughs, some great lunches, and a number of people who made the visit far more than just "work visit". However, that also means that I'll have to plan a trip to be out here again next year, so I'm sure I'll be visiting the shores of Lake Superior once again in 2027 and I'm already looking forward to the trip!

I will say that if you do happen to be in Thunder Bay, you want to hit an amazing restaurant named The Sal. A couple of co-workers hyped it up by talking about the great food they have, and I am here to tell you that they were spot-on with their reviews. I wasn't all that hungry when we visited, but I ended up getting the "Loaded Grill Cheese" - bacon, cheddar, swiss, crushed mozza sticks, garlic aioli on rye - and it was the kind of comfort food that I needed on a road trip!

The burgers were huge, the crispy fries were served in solid portions, and the clubhouse sandwich ordered by my colleague looked like it needed a forklift to pick up. I don't usually give restaurant reviews for the simple reason is that my palete isn't your palete, but there were enough good offerings at The Sal that everyone can find something they like. Make no mistake that there will be a regular visit to this great restaurant whenever I'm in town! It was so good!

Before I get out of town and hit the highway, I did want to make mention of a new battle that long-time hockey host and interviewer Christine Simpson is facing as she revealed that she has breast cancer today. Christine was formerly with Rogers Sportsnet, but did not have her contract renewed in 2024 after establishing herself as one of the premiere interviewers in the game. Today's announcement sucks to see, but she stated that doctors caught it early and that "they’re very optimistic about my outcome". Obviously, I'm in Christine's corner.

I never met Christine, but she always seemed so positive in her professional work. I've never heard anyone say anything negative about her either, so this leads me to believe that she's a genuinely upbeat and fun person to be around. I'm hoping Christine kicks cancer's butt and it's too afraid to ever return. She should be working in hockey still, so maybe we'll see that after she wins this fight!

I'm already late getting on the road with some last-minute work I needed to complete, so I'm off now. It should be a quick jaunt heading west back to Winnipeg, and I'm already looking forward to getting home and seeing Meg, the furball, and getting back into the routine of life. It's been fun in Thunder Bay on this road trip over the last few days, but there's always something to bring me home!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

This Is Anything But Victory

I've never been an executive for a television or streaming company, but making one's offerings available to as many people as possible without charging exorbitant fees seems like a good place to start. Of course, those offerings would also need to be entertaining to keep people coming back, but that would be the challenge in filling a television lineup on a day-to-day basis. Sports networks seem less demanding as they seem to broadcast old games, talk shows, radio shows, highlight shows, and anything else they can before sports are played live in the evening. Apparently, though, that's not the case as Victory+ has officially closed its doors for broadcasts.

For those that aren't aware, Victory+ was an American streaming service owned by Calgary-based A Parent Media Company. It officially launched in September 2024, ahead of the 2024–25 NHL season, with the Dallas Stars as its first partner. From there, they'd add the Anaheim Ducks to their roster and select St. Louis Blues games before branching out to broadcast MLB's Texas Rangers, the NWSL, Major Arena Soccer League, and the Western Hockey League in Canada.

It seems like they had enough options to keep people watching, but their announcement today has thrown a number of teams' broadcasting schedules into disarray. The Dallas Stars announced on Monday that they were moving their broadcasts to Amazon Prime which made things look bleak for Victory+, and this comes on the heels of the Ducks telling Victory+ in June that they were dissolving their agreement after Victory+ missed payments to its partners.

Again, I fail to understand how that was possible when Victory+ was supposed to be making money off advertising. A net negative cashflow would have been evident as they added more and more teams to their roster, so why would they allow that negative revenue stream to grow and continue? I'm baffled by the lack of simple accounting knowledge shown here by people with business degrees.

These upstart streaming services are proving to suffer from the same problem that a lot of other broadcasting businesses are showing, and that problem is that the sports they're broadcasting simply don't bring in the promised return that people forecast. With Rogers Communications bleeding money and selling off national rights to anyone who shows mild interest and, now, with Victory+ disappearing as quickly as Bally Sports did, the NHL is running out of places where their product will be seen. With both cable and streaming subscriptions down in US households, justifying the cost of overpaying for hockey will be impossible. That should worry everyone.

It's hard to understand how the NHL can justify its outrageous broadcasting fees when a single rating point represents exactly 1% of the total target population in a specific geographic market. If the NHL boasts about having "the most-watched on record in the U.S." last season "with an average of 1.8 million viewers," they're not being seen by a lot of people. A network calculates its potential advertising income by using two calculations: Cost Per Point (CPP) that looks at the cost for each rating point, and Estimated Ad Rate which takes the CPP and multiplies it by the ratings scores delivered by Nielsen.

For example, if Rogers charges $2000 for a 30-second spot during hockey broadcasts, Rogers would be looking for a massive audience to help drive their advertising revenue up. Game One of last year's Stanley Cup Final drew 1.3 million viewers, that's not a huge chunk of Canada watching Vegas and Carolina. For calculations sake, though, let's say that it's 5% of Canada that watched, and that means that Rogers can charge $10,000 for a 30-second spot on its broadcast.

If Rogers shows 25 different commericals on its broadcasts, they make $250,000 per broadcast. Knowing that they broadcast "more than 500 national NHL games per season," let's grab the midpoint and say it's 550 games per year. That means that they only make $137,500,000 in advertising revenue per year, falling massively short of the nearly-billion dollars it needs to cover the NHL's broadcast fees alone. Add in all the staffing, travel, and other costs that come with having hockey on TV, and you're well over a billion dollars of revenue needed to cover Rogers' costs annually. That's a lot of red ink.

At the end of the day, Rogers will not make money on this deal despite being the sole Canadian broadcaster with NHL rights, and their new twevle-year agreement with the NHL doesn't start until October. With Victory+ having much smaller access to games, their advertising revenue stream wouldn't come close to covering their costs either. And with the NHL entering the picture for four teams, I'd expect that one will see very few advertisers signing on to have their ads on this new service outside of oline gambling sites and NHL-produced advertisements. If Victory+ couldn't get the ratings with their roster of teams, the NHL certainly won't achieve them either.

Expect your cable bills, subscription fees, and ticket prices for Toronto pro sports teams to continue to climb as Rogers looks to curb the flow of red ink, but it's too late for anyone on a Victory+ subscription. That money is likely gone with creditors now needing to be paid, and Victory+ will now just be another footnote in the NHL's broadcasting history. And until the NHL realizes that it doesn't have the pull that the NFL or NBA does on television in the US market, more and more broadcasters will lose money until they go broke.

Now you know why the NHL is expanding into Houston and Atlanta, and not Quebec City and Hartford. Those two television markets will artificially boost the NHL's numbers again so they can continue to try and force the spreadsheet arrows upward rather than moving into hockey markets where the passion for the game is real. Of course, they may already be priced out of Quebec City and Hartford with the outrageous ticket prices that fans are foced to pay, so it almost points to the NHL's financial model being broken entirely.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Winning In Kazan?

Consider me surprised when I read the news of Kevin Hayes signing in the KHL with Ak Bars Kazan. I would have never guessed that Hayes, who has represented the United States on the ice, would look to Russia for his next contract, but the 34 year-old forward will make the hump after signing a one-year deal. Of course, the image to the left isn't what you'd expect to see on a hockey blog, but that would be Kevin Hayes on July 16, 2023 when he married his wife, Katya Vasilyev, while a member of the St. Louis Blues, and she reportedly played a key role in convincing Hayes to take the contract from the Russian club after offers from NHL teams weren't forthcoming.

According to multiple websites, Hayes said in the Ak Bars Kazan announcement, "My wife is from Russia, and she has always wanted me to play here. An exciting new chapter is beginning for our whole family, and we're all very happy about it." Good for him. Nobody should sneer at a guy chasing something his family wants."

Far be it from me to call out a player's wife for helping her husband choose where he plays, but I'm not quite convinced the "my wife is from Russia" part is true considering that her Boston College athlete biography lists her hometown as Foster City, California. She was born in Moscow according to a YouTube interview, but her being from Russia seems like a bit of a stretch. However, I'm not here to throw shade on a family's decision to play in Russia, so I wish them well.

Hayes joins an Ak Bars Kazan team that lost in the Gagarin Cup Final last season to Lokomotiv, but they were the third-best team in the KHL's Eastern Conference with a 38-17-5-8 record. He joins a team that boasts noted bully Mitchell Miller, playmaking defender Nikita Lyamkin, and skilled forwards Kirill Semyonov and Alexander Barabanov. Head coach Anvar Gatiyatulin was named the KHL Coach of the Year last season, so it seems like Hayes is in a good spot.

For a guy who has had one NHL season where he scored more than 50 points and just two where he scored more than 20 goals over his twelve years in the show, there was zero chance that he would see a big day in the NHL as a 34 year-old free agent. He might have found work in the NHL this season if he accepted a PTO or took a bonus-filled contract that paid a low base salary, but Hayes chose the guaranteed money that the KHL's Ak Bars Kazan was offering.

We've seen players head over to the KHL and find a home where they can thrive. 33 year-old Josh Leivo has had two solid seasons in the KHL with Salavat Yulaev Ufa and Traktor Chelyabinsk where he scored 80 and 65 points, respectively, which was better than any total he put up as a professional hockey player in North America. Hayes obviosuly needs to find his game alongside his teammates, but he scored 27 goals and 65 points in 40 games for Boston College.

Clearly, this is an adventure that Kevin and Katya want as they move from the east coast to 850kms east of Moscow. No one is promising that anything will be easy, but he's joining a solid team that needs a replacement for Nathan Todd who moved to Metallurg Magnitogorsk. If Hayes can be that guy, Ak Bars Kazan will be in a good position to battle their way back to a second Gagarin Cup Final this year.

And if things go well, Hayes could be hoisting the trophy at the end of the campaign, proving that listening to his wife was the best decision he made when it comes to his professional hockey career.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

A Short Road Trip

I won't be doing much on the hockey front today thanks to being in a vehicle for eight hours, but that's life when it comes to work responsibilities. I have a scheduled visit with a branch I never get to see enough, so I'll be working the next few days out of town as I try to get all of their technological issues solved. That being said, I felt like I was an F-Zero racer from the classic SNES game while driving in my new vehicle with all its bells and whistles, so the drive today was pretty comfortable. Like any drive, though, there are some people who don't seem to understand the basic rules of the road, but those people were thankfully few and far between. Needless to say, I arrived at my destination as planned, and the ride was smooth-sailing for the majority of the concrete journey.

What made the second half of the journey that much more enjoyable is that I was able to tune into the local professional baseball radio broadcast as I drove thanks to the magic of cell phones and the internet. Despite being some four hours away from the ballpark, I was able to tune in and hear the call clearly thanks to the station's internet broadcast. As such, I didn't miss a pitch despite being a considerable distance from the station's broadcasting range.

This isn't any sort of new revelation, you're saying, and I completely understand that. However, it does bring to light the importance of radio broadcasts when it comes to professional sports teams as there's no way I could tune into the video broadcast while driving. Normally, I would watch the game if I wasn't working at the ballpark, but today's excursion to a far-off location made that impossible.

With the improvements in technology and advancements made to stream audio better, it doesn't matter where you in the world now when it comes to listening to your favorite team's radio broadcast. Radio has always been free outside of satellite radio, and most teams have opted to have a local station broadcast its games to its immediate market so its fanbase can listen whenever they're playing.

That's a smart decision for people who may be bustling around cities and towns where the broadcast signal reaches, but it made it hard for people to listen before streaming audio on the internet became a thing. Today, there are no limits when listening from faraway places, and my example today is an important reason why hockey teams still need radio: they can reach ANY market with that broadcast!

With Rogers deciding to scrap their sports radio stations in both Vancouver and Calgary, there was an immediate backlash towards Rogers before the Flames signed a deal with Corus-owned QR Calgary 770AM and the Canucks moved to Rogers-owned KiSS Throwbacks at 104.9 FM. Those broadcasts will still allow fans to hear their favorite teams, but the fact that Rogers continues to disrupt something that was working well over a profit statement held by shareholders is something I'll never understand. Radio is a proven and valuable asset!

Had radio died with the rise of the internet as some predicted, there would have been no way for me to have listened to the game pitch-by-pitch as I did today. There's likely no way that a lot of sports fans who have moved outside the broadcast range of their favorite team's radio signal would be able to consume that content. Yet not one person to whom I have spoken about this very topic has ever said, "Having a radio broadcast of that game is a stupid idea."

I won't lie in telling you that I listen to games from all over the place in the winter when I'm driving. I can usually be found listening to a Fort Wayne Komets game or a Pittsburgh Penguins game - two teams whose schedules rarely cross with Winnipeg - as I'm driving around on a winter's evening, and the end result is that I miss nothing from those games by tuning in via streaming audio. It's an awesome thing to be able to catch broadcasts from anywhere, and I'm grateful that I'm able to do so. As a driver, I respect the power of radio.

I need to go through and update some of the links on these, but, if you want to listen to your favorite hockey team while travelling, there are resources right here on HBIC for that. I have a whole page dedicated to NHL teams' radio broadcasts, another for AHL teams' broadcasts, and a third for ECHL teams' broadcasts. Find your team(s), save their radio links, and you're set for in-vehicle hockey broadcasts from your favorite teams! How awesome is that?

If you needed a reason as to why I love radio, it's this reason. Yes, it's an outlet for a lot of hockey chatter between Jason and I, but the fact that we can reach ears around the globe is one of the main reasons I love it. When Canada West fans crashed the server in 2018 during the Canada West Final between Saskatchewan and Manitoba by tuning in from all over the planet, that was a watershed moment for me. I knew we were reaching people with our goofy broadcasts, but people were also responding by tuning in to hear us call games.

Whether it was grandparents in Florida who could listen for free or Albertans listening while tweeting at us, we had expanded UMFM's borders from a campus radio station to something much bigger. The flip side, though, was that people were able to tune in and hear the game in its entirety for free from two guys who loved calling the game, had a passion for women's hockey and the players on the ice, and understood that many fans wanted inexpensive coverage.

Listening to the baseball game as I drove gave me a lot to think about when it came to Rogers' recent decisions, and it's renewed my passion for having radio as a vital and important medium for sports. My hope is that you feel the same about your radio broadcasts, and I'd urge you to support your local radio station that broadcasts your favorite team(s), especially if you live outside their broadcast map.

It's still free and it's still totally accessible as it should be. All you need is a radio or an internet-connected device to tune in!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!