You really do have to appreciate the effort. Neither of those teams were pulling any punches and some of those guys play tomorrow.

Risk of injury be damned, they all played hard.

to all of you who enjoyed watching the USA hockey in this Olympics, I suggest you adopt watching the Dallas Stars regularly. Hockey is a blast. I've been raised watching it. Just as entertaining as football.

The NHL had to love this.

I was out eating. The Lakers are playing the Nuggets (I live in LA) and every eye is glued to the hockey game.

That NEVER happens. When the Lakers play this town stops moving. It's the ONLY thing everyone in this city agrees on--everyone loves the Lakers.

It's up to the NHL now to capitalize on this.

I hope NHL allows their players to play in the next winter games.

To 1,000,000 touchdowns...and beyond

Based on some comments during these games, I suspect some eyes have been opened in the NHL and some are eating their words about 2014.

Yes, the schedule for those games will be jacked up, yes, you won't have near the buzz in the NHL's territory, yes they don't get along with the KHL, but for the sake of the international expansion of this league at least, they need to be in Sochi.

If Alex Ovechkin holds tight to his threats, I imagine a number of others will follow and the NHL's hand might be forced.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 3/1/2010 12:41a).]

I think the NHL'ers will be back, but I think they'll pressure NBC for more prime-time coverage. They have nothing to be gained by playing at 3:00 pm on a Wednesday on MSNBC.

Unless they're going to start games at 1 in the morning, you're not going to get live primetime coverage.

I imagine they'll push for a mix of getting USA and Canada in the latest game to get some mid-afternoon live coverage in those countries and tape delayed USA and Canada games.

Edit- Scheduling in that middle weekend will be huge. That'd be the ideal time for late night in Russia, mid afternoon in north America games for the USA and Canada. You play at 9 or 10 there, it's what, 2 or 3 in the afternoon on the east coast?

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 3/1/2010 9:44p).]