TNT Review
from Matt Porter of the Boston Globe,
TNT’s maiden voyage as a home of hockey looked slick graphically and sounded familiar. It also had its technical issues, but hey, it’s the preseason.
The Bruins-Flyers game on Thursday featured five broadcasters who came over from NBC’s defunct hockey operation: Kenny Albert, Eddie Olczyk, and Keith Jones on the call at TD Garden, and McHugh and Carter in the studio. The latter pair was joined at intermission by Tocchet, the former power forward and coach, and like Carter an ex-Bruin.
The broadcast also debuted former official Don Koharski as TNT’s rules analyst. Koharski, who spent 32 years in stripes, is not a TV natural. He acknowledged he was more focused on the officials than the action on the ice. He did seem to relax by the end of the doubleheader, which saw the excellent tandem of Brendan Burke and Darren Pang call the Kings-Golden Knights late show....
Other notes about TNT’s initial effort: The scorebug is clean and tight, if a bit too small … A recurring graphic of “time on ice” for players is a bit clunky, since it shows how much time the player has accumulated in the game. I’d rather see the more conventional clock for a particular shift, which shows a player’s potential tiredness if attached to someone who’s out there for 70, 80, 90 seconds or more … The studio show was holding an open fourth seat, for Wayne Gretzky. The broadcast made several references to the Great One’s forthcoming debut. If Gretzky’s studio game is as good as the dramatic TNT promo video it ran, it might have something. When was the last time Gretzky had to prove himself at anything?
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