It Happened

It was undoubtedly going to happen before this season ended. We all knew the likelihood of Alexander Ovechkin breaking Wayne Gretzky's career goals mark was within reach and certainly attainable for Ovechkin as long as he stayed healthy, and he has done that for most of the season despite him reportedly having a broken leg earlier in the campaign. Regardless of the handful of games he missed, Ovechkin was still finding the back of the net more often than any 39 year-old player should, and the speed in which he approached Gretzky's mark was impressive. Today, Ovechkin scored the 895th goal of his career, breaking Gretzky's mark, and it should allow the hockey world to resume its normal build-up towards the playoffs moving forward.

I've already given my reasons why I wasn't interested in Ovechkin's quest for 895, so I won't rewrite what was already written. Instead, let's go to the video of the moment where history was made.
Ovechkin scored the historic 895th goal of his career at 7:26 of the second period while on the power-play against New York Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin to cut the Islanders' lead to 2-1, kicking off a long pause as dignitaries, teammates, and Wayne Gretzky himself made their way onto the ice to congratulate Ovechkin. For the record, Tom Wilson and Dylan Strome assisted on the record-breaking goal while John Carlson and Jeff Chychrun were the Washington defenders and Charlie Lindgren was between the pipes. The four Islanders who were killing the penalty were Ryan Pulock, Adam Pelech, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, and Simon Holmstrom.

Lots of sports icons from across the sports world gave Ovechkin their congratulations, and these were plastered all over social and shared about a bazillion times. I'm not certain why people like Tom Brady, Michael Phelps, and LeBron James were offering their congratulations, but to each their own. Seeing the other sports recognize Ovechkin's achievement is nice, but it felt a little forced. Regardless of that aspect, I do offer him my congratulations for reaching the milestone, and I'm sure he'll put new ones in place before this season and his career is over. 895 and counting!

The Islanders would prevail on this historic day by a 4-1 score, and that loss prevented the Capitals from surpassing the Winnipeg Jets for top spot in the NHL standings. With five games to go for each of those two teams, Winnipeg has 108 points while Washington remains at 107 points. Dallas is three points back of Winnipeg and two behind Washington, and the Vegas Golden Knights are six points back of Winnipeg and five back of Washington. If you're wondering about schedules, here are the remaining five teams for each of the four teams who have broken 100 points this season:

• Winnipeg: vs STL, at DAL, at CHI, vs EDM, vs ANA.
• Washington: vs CAR, at CBJ, vs CBJ, at NYI, at PIT.
• Dallas: vs VAN, vs WPG, vs UTA, at DET, at NAS.
• Vegas: at COL, vs SEA, vs NAS, at CAL, at VAN.

With the quest for 985 behind us, the quest for home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs and the President's Trophy can continue. Four teams have a shot with two of those teams - Winnipeg and Washington - heading towards the finish line neck-and-neck. Arguably, the Jets have the tougher schedule and could potentially fall back to third-overall depending on how the next two games go against St. Louis and Dallas, but Washington has tough games against a fighting-for-their-playoff-lives Columbus squad and an Islanders team that just shut them down today. Who will win this race?

We'll know over the next eleven days as these four teams are in the final stretch. One of the four will have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs and a shiny trophy to display at the office. It's not quite 895 goals and a spot in the NHL record books, but Ovechkin could legitimately do both this season. The harder one of the two feats? He's already accomplished that.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Tariffs Are Real

The sun was shining on this glorious Saturday as I awoke far earlier than I normally would have in an effort to get one major task crossed off my list. As you may have heard on The Hockey Show this past week, we're gearing up for another edition of Survivor: NHL Playoffs that will start on April 17. Prizes are being collected and organized as you read this, but one was shipped to the border due to the sender not willing to send it into Canada via one of the delivery services. In saying that, it became road trip day for me!

I've made this trip countless times with little trouble as I passed by the towns of Altona and Gretna to approach the Canada-US border crossing. The port of entry just north of Neche, North Dakota usually isn't very busy, and today was no different as I appeared to be the only vehicle heading to the US side of the border. I wasn't expecting any sort of major delays as we pulled up to the window to speak to the border crossing guard, but the rules have changed, it seems.

For the first time ever in my entire life, I was asked to turn the car off and unlock the doors as the border agent took a look inside both the back seat and the hatch of my SUV. His questions weren't any different as I was expecting those, but I guess the new tariffs are forcing the border agents to be far more vigilant in ensuring things aren't brought across the border without having the applicable checks and balances completed. I had nothing that was being left in the US, but I would imagine that some people try to bring things like food, clothing, and other goods into the United States.

After being let through to the US side of the coin, I proceeded to the parcel service that was holding the package that had been sent. $3 later, I had the package in my hands and was heading back to the border to head into Canada. My total time in the US was about 20 minutes with 15 of those minutes being used to wait in the car for the parcel service to open. In any case, my quest was successful.

Arriving at the Canadian side of the border, though, was a little more costly. Thanks to the reciprocal tariffs placed on goods coming into Canada, the Canadian border agents determined that I needed to cough up a little cash to bring the package into Canada. Thanks to its place of manufacturing, the tariff cost was 17% rather than being the 25% an item would have cost had it been made in the US, so I guess I got a bit of a discount? In any case, with taxes and duty, the package cost me an additional $43. So much for free trade, right?

The good news is that the two grand prizes have now been secured for the Survivor: NHL Playoffs contest. I also got a nice three-hour road trip into my day, and I still had lots of time to get some work done around the house. With summer quickly approaching, driving in the warm sunlight was a nice change from having to blast the heat in car like I did when making that run to the border in the winter.

Let this drive in the sun to the border be a quick reminder that all deliveries coming from the US may required additional cash for them to be released as the tariffs are certainly being applied. This is just another reminder to buy Canadian, folks, whenever you can. Or, if you're American and reading this, buy American so you're not hit with these idiotic costs either. The extra costs aren't worth it.

Remember, the Survivor: NHL Playoffs contest starts on April 17!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Congrats... And Stuff?

While it may be a historic moment tonight and will certainly be historic upon Alex Ovechkin's next goal, it might be time for a disclaimer: I really don't care if Ovechkin breaks Wayne Gretzky's career goal-scoring record. While it's certainly interesting to see Gretzky's record fall, it's hard to be enthusiastic for Ovechkin when I spent a lot of my life disliking both men. As a Penguins fan, the Ovechkin dislike is probably understandable for anyone who knows me, but I lived as Mario Lemieux fan in my formative years when the "Gretzky-vs-Lemieux" rivalry was at its height. As such, this chase that Ovechkin was on to break history was a non-starter for me.

Some of this is complicated by the fact that I grew up watching the Winnipeg Jets get decimated by the Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers through the 1980s. As they Oilers won Stanley Cups by the handful during that era, they often seemed to meet the Jets at some point in the playoffs where Gretzky and his high-scoring pals would ultimately prevail over the Jets. Having your heart broken as a kid by the same cast of villains over and over again meant that I recognized Gretzky's records with disdain. In some ways, I still do.

In saying that, it was easy to cheer for a guy who was a natural rival when it came to setting scoring records. While he didn't have the cast of characters similar to that which Gretzky had at his disposal, the Pittsburgh Penguins had the one guy who could outdo #99 on any given night. It didn't hurt that he played for a team with an actual logo, but watching Lemieux drag three guys to the net and score a goal was, in my impressionable mind, far more diffcult than hiding behind the net and centering a pass to an already-good teammate.

We jump to 1991 where the Penguins had become a contender, Lemieux had a cast of stars around him, and the threat of Gretzky being an impact in the postseason was close to nil thanks to the trade that sent him to the Los Angeles Kings from the Edmonton Oilers. Of course, the Penguins dismissed the Minnesota North Stars in the Stanley Cup Final in 1991 for their first Stanley Cup parade, and I, as a young, impressionable fan, felt vindicated. Gretzky's era was over, and Mario Lemieux's era of dominance was beginning!

1992 brought more celebration as the Blackhawks were the final victim to Lemieux-and-cast's dominance that season, and the city of Pittsburgh celebrated a second-straight Stanley Cup parade that summer. It seemed like a three-peat was almost a guarantee as the 1992-93 season progressed until Mario Lemieux stapped away from the team and game after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He'd return and win the scoring title, but David Volek's bullet-to-my-adolescent-head in overtime of Game Seven in the second round ignited my hatred for the New York Islanders.

Of course, Gretzky got traded, never won another Stanley Cup, and the Jets left Winnipeg for sandier climates in Phoenix. The Penguins wouldn't win another Stanley Cup with Lemieux in the lineup, and that was when I realized that health issues can derail what seems like a record-smashing career for players. I wasn't around for the Bobby Orr days about which my dad would tell us, but it all started making sense as Lemieux's health began keeping him out of the lineup.

Jump forward to Lemieux buying the Penguins out of bankruptcy in 1999 which led to some rather lean years before 2005's NHL Entry Draft took place. That was when the Penguins selected Sidney Crosby first-overall, and it was one year after the Washington Capitals had drafted Alexander Ovechkin in 2004. This kicked off the Crosby-Ovechkin rivalry between Pittsburgh and Washington which revived my dislike for the Capitals once again after watching Peter Bondra, Michal Pivonka, Sergei Gonchar, Dino Ciccarelli, and Dale Hunter be thorns in the side of the Penguins during the early-1990s.

I don't really need to go over the Penguins-Capitals rivalry that featured Crosby and Ovechkin, but the 2009, 2016, and 2017 Stanley Cup victories all featured a Pittsburgh-Washington second-round battle while Washington's lone Stanley Cup parade came at the expense of a second-round Pittsburgh loss. Of course, it wasn't just Pittsburgh-vs-Washington, but it was also Crosby-vs-Ovechkin in a quiet Canada-vs-Russia battle that was recreated from the ashes of the 2005 World Junior Championship. It had layers.

There's a chance that the fans on Long Island could be witness to the historic moment when Ovechkin surpasses Gretzky on Sunday. The irony of that moment is how the New York Islanders seem to find their way into each instance: Gretzky learning what sacrifice looks like after the Islanders beat his Oilers, the Oilers defeating the Islanders to win their first Stanley Cup, the 1993 David Volek goal, and now, potentially, the Ovechkin history. And Ovechkin will likely victimize one of his countrymen in the name of history when Ilya Sorokin is in net on Sunday. It could be Marcus Hogberg, but we'll see.

In any event, I feel nothing about Ovechkin breaking Gretzky's record. It doesn't stir any emotions, it doesn't excite me to see him do it, and I'm tired of hearing about it. It is a huge moment, and I do appreciate the sheer difficulty in scoring the number of goals that Ovechkin has - 894 total to date - but it's hard to get excited for someone you've wanted to see lose in every manner possible stand on the precipice of legendary status. It makes me hope that the Islanders shut out Washington on Sunday, but I'd rather he surpass Gretzky's total ASAP so he doesn't do it against Pittsburgh on April 17.

It is a moment that will live in NHL history until the next legendary goal scorer comes along and challenges that total, and I cannot deny that I respect Alexander Ovechkin for staying healthy, getting a chance to chase down this record, and writing his name into the NHL history books. I raise my stick to Ovechkin reaching immortality alongside one of the greatest scorers and certainly the highest scorer in NHL history. At the very least, Ovechkin deserves some respect and recognition for his accomplishment. I can give that.

And now I'll be cheering for an Islanders shutout on Sunday.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Hockey Show - Episode 654

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, returns to the airwaves of 101.5 megahertz on the FM dial tonight as our hosts get you ready for a major contest that will happen in two weeks! Every year, The Hockey Show has run a playoff contest for sixteen contestants, and we're nearly ready to kick off another exciting edition of Survivor: NHL Playoffs for this year's postseason! Out hosts will chat about the contest tonight as they get you ready for April 17 when the contest opens! Beyond that, the gents have some hockey news to discuss, so get ready for another busy show tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

He won't physically be in the studio tonight, but Jeff Probst makes a return as Teebz and Jason get you set up with the initial information for Survivor: NHL Playoffs that begins on April 17. From there, the hosts have some business to go over as they look at the new deal hammered out by Rogers Communications and the NHL, why that deal might not be so good, a former U SPORTS player is making waves at the pro level, a number of leagues have champions as seasons wind down, we'll have a new WHL team next season, and there's a Melbourne moment about an encouraging tool when it comes to athletes' health! Assuming we can squeeze all this news in, you'll want to have your radio or internet-enabled device tuned to UMFM's signals to UMFM tonight for 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 new UMFM website's online 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. It's a solid app.

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 chat Survivor, new deals, crazy money, winning big, winning seasons, old teams in new leagues, new technology, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

PODCAST: April 3, 2025: Episode 654

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Expensive Hockey Broadcasts

While news broke on Monday of the deal that was announced today between Rogers Communications and the National Hockey League, it's hard to imagine Sportsnet's owners spending more money on a product that didn't return profits on their investment until very recently and didn't make a significant impact on the bottom line over a ten-year period. Yet the deal announced today not only say Rogers Sportsnet commit to another twelve-year deal with the NHL, but they actually spent considerably more money to secure the national broadcast rights in Canada over that period.

Let's jump into the time machine and head back to 2013 when Rogers and the NHL signed a blockbuster 12-year, $5.2-billion deal that put the NHL on Rogers' networks. The two sides have always spoken about that deal in positive terms, but it isn't hard to see through the smokescreen that both sides were building. Rogers sold French TV rights to TVA Sports in a deal to help curb the losses that were mounting, and they sold off rights to Monday Night Hockey to Amazon in 2024. Finding games was suddenly harder than before.

Despite trying to shore up this deal to help their bottom line, Rogers Communications saw very little return on their investment. According to the Globe & Mail's Simon Houpt, "The pretax profit for its three Sportsnet services has stayed flat in that period, inching up to $88-million in 2023 from $87-million on 2013" despite earning $92.55 in subscription revenue from customers who subscribed to all three services of Sportsnet, Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360. That figure was up from $34.10 in 2013, and yet they earned just $1 million more in pretax profit despite subscription costs nearly tripling.

Upon signing the deal today, Rogers' shares "fell 5.9 per cent on Tuesday to close at $36.17 in Toronto, reaching their lowest intraday level since 2012" as reported by Bloomberg News. Part of that drop was due to the failing Rogers Bank business, but it was also sparked by investors who "are already wary of Rogers' balance sheet and funding headwinds". TD Cowen's Vince Valentini told Bloomberg News today, "[W]e do not expect this rights renewal to be either a negative for Rogers, nor an overly material event."

None of that paints a particularly good picture of the investment that Rogers made with the NHL, so why did they renew the twelve-year deal for $11 billion ($7.7 billion USD), more than double the value of the original deal they signed with the NHL?

Rogers chief executive officer Tony Staffieri explained the new investment at the press conference today, stating,

"The value of live sports content just continues to appreciate, and it's really rooted in viewership continuing to grow. If you look at our NHL deal over the last decade, viewership grew by 50 per cent.

"And with that kind of growth, what you see is revenue growing at a very steady and healthy pace in terms of advertising revenue, subscription revenue, and in the deal we have now, sub-licensing revenue. And so as we look to the next 12 years, we were very thoughtful in how we thought about the economics."

Aside from the fact that revenue isn't growing exclusively from hockey, Mr. Staffieri's own pretax profit reporting shows that the hockey deal isn't helping Rogers find increased profits nor is there any guarantee for future profits with more and more people cutting the cord. Streaming services may generate more money for Rogers, but the Globe & Mail's Irene Galea and Simon Houpt noted that "Mr. Staffieri sidestepped a question about whether the company would pass on the added costs to consumers".

One place where Rogers can make up some of the difference is through their licensing deals as they established with TVA Sports and Amazon. The Canadian Press reported that "Staffieri said Rogers will 'look to opportunities to continue to sub-license where it makes sense'" which means that Rogers' streaming services may carry less games despite promises of fewer blackouts and games from both sides of the border including "up to 10 more games on certain teams".

The only problem is that if they sell off those rights to another streaming service or network, there's an increased chance that people will stop paying for Sportsnet's services. After all, if you have to subscribe to six different services to watch your favorite team, how does that help hockey fans? Hint: it doesn't.

Complicating the process further is that the relationship between Sportsnet and CBC ends with the current rights deal, and there's no extension between the two networks yet. Rogers Sports & Media President Colette Watson said today, "We like our partnership and we value our partnership with the CBC and over the next 18 months we'll look to see if there's a continued partnership there."

That's an odd statement - "look to see if there's a continued partnership" - when CBC is literally one of a handful of stations that is available on all cable packages from coast to coast to coast. Regardless of Sportsnet's feelings towards CBC, removing hockey from the nation's public broadcaster would be like carving the heart out of the nation's chest. Hockey Night in Canada is an institution, and Rogers should be working to keep that institution intact. After all, without Hockey Night in Canada's enduring legacy on CBC, there's no guarantee that Sportsnet owns the broadcast rights for the NHL.

In the end, aside from owning the rights for NHL games, I am baffled why Rogers Communications would sign a new deal for $11 billion that sees Rogers pay the NHL in escalating annual payments. The NHL has continued to profess that it is a valuable asset for anyone to own, but Rogers' balance sheet says otherwise as their adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) show a margin of just 3.4 per cent from media at $84 million. Rogers isn't making money off this deal, and now they doubled their commitment to maintain it? Make that make sense because it financially does not.

I'm not saying that Rogers Communications won't turn a profit on their newest NHL deal that will expire after the 2037-38 season. They can look at innovating and introducing new technology to help make the game better on television, they can have a better presence with quality content, and they can show intriguing matchups, but none of that will matter if the network is losing bags of money.

An $11-billion total bill with escalating annual payments means that the media wing of Rogers Communications will only see margins shrink annually if they can't sell enough ads or sponsored segments. And if margins go to zero or into the negative, expect Rogers to try to erase their losses by selling off more broadcasting rights.

The business of hockey should be its own specialized university degree because it's hard to make sense how hockey fans benefit with this new deal. Especially if it ends up costing fans more money.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

A New Month Begins

With the calendar turning to April today, I am taking a day off. March was a busy month of hockey with everything that happened in the last few weeks, and I just need a night to unwind and not think about the game. Aside from updating some spreadsheets and cleaning up the desktop of the laptop where I do some of the graphic and video work you see here, tonight will be a night where I can purge whatever leftover thoughts I had from March and press on into April where the temperatures will rise, the game will intensify, and teams will begin preparing for a playoff run or an off-season of changes. While it may be April Fool's Day, this is not a joke: I am taking today off.

I can tell you that work has been far busier and far more challenging in the last month than anything I've seen in my career with my current employer. I'm not complaining about being busy nor do I feel overwhelmed, but it's that sort of constant stream of work where you look at the clock at 9am before checking it again only to see that it's 2pm. I like being busy at work, but that kind of constant flow of work starts to wear one down as there never seemed to be a break where one could have caught one's breath. And everyone needs that break.

On that note, it was one year ago where I proclaimed that I would likely be posting less stuff on this site. That proclamation never came close to being true as I continue to add something daily over the last year, even if it's not hockey-related in any way. I was thinking about the promise I made to have the site undergo serious renovations - something I am going to complete in the summer - but it occurred to me that I need to start adding more to one part of the blog.

I was looking at the bookcase that holds a number of the books I've reviewed here, and I have two piles of books that aren't organized on the shelves because they have yet to be read and reviewed. How did I get two piles of unread books? They were bought or given to me as gifts with the intention of cracking their spines, but my time was directed elsewhere and those books were forgotten.

Having admitted this, I am making it my goal to read two of the books I have set aside with the intention of reviewing them on here and on my GoodReads account. According to the total on that site, I have 38 hockey-related books I have yet to read, and that number is far too large for my liking. The only way to reduce is to start flipping pages and absorbing the information from those pages. That will start this weekend. If all goes well, there should be a review of the book I chose to read next week. After that, it becomes habit.

Not every weekend will see my face in a book, but I do want to whittle down that list of 38 publications to something in the single-digit values. There are some titles that are interesting to me, and I fully admit that I should have read them before embarking on this new habit-forming venture I'm undertaking. For a guy who laments those at work who either don't read directions or skip the mandatory parts of directions, I should be following my own advice.

March may have been National Reading Month in Canada, but I'm kicking it up a notch or three in April. Better late than never, right?

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!