Good point on the NHL schedule conflict, but considering the NHLN played that woman’s tournament recently, despite it being up against NHL games, I don’t know why that would be dispositive.

I don’t think the English broadcast team would even matter. When the NHL opened in Europe this year at least one Blackhawks game was broadcast without any PxP or color commentary. Center Ice also routinely gives the French RDS feed so it’s not like there has been a whole lot of concern for giving people a broadcast feed they can understand. Maybe it’s a little different for amateurs but as CP2 points out, this is for puckheads so it shouldn’t matter.

Can’t be more for the rights to all the games. And the timing of it doesn’t matter because they are all on the same schedule. You’re completely right about the puckhead/prospect thing. If you have NHLN or CI you are already committed to watching tons of hockey irrespective of national allegiance.

Yes, its a cut and paste mistake. Here is a link to the games schedule from the IIHF website.

http://www.iihf.com/channels0910/wm20/schedule.html

Ah the good old days. I miss that pairing. No hype, just the game. Clement could be a little boring at times, but he realized that people wanted to watch the game not him. Thorne is an ok baseball announcer, but an above average hockey announcer. He always seemed to me to have more passion in his voice when he did hockey as opposed to Mets/O’s.