Quickly, name the four biggest professional sports leagues in the United States. NFL, MLB, NBA and … NCAA football! We’ve all heard some version of this tired joke, but most Chicago Blackhawks fans seem to relish the NHL’s slightly under-the-radar profile.
Nonetheless, I was happy to have the 2016 World Cup of Hockey appear on a well-known television platform last September, and intrigued that ESPN would be broadcasting the games, despite those aggressively moronic TV commercials featuring the fictional “Reg Carling” bum-rushing various NHL stars.
But here we are eight months later with ESPN announcing a massive purge of its tremendous pool of journalistic talent, including many top-tier NHL correspondents and writers.