Not a fan of ESPN....

-They called MacDermid a forward😡😡😡
-Made fun of the Leafs 2000 day Cup drought😠😡😡😡😡
-Made fun of the Sabres 10 year playoff drought😡😡😡😡
-Called the Canes the "Carolina Panthers"😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

Making fun of teams droughts while their fanbases are watching is just wrong imo!! They're probably trying to be funny but it really just isn't funny.

ESPNs NHL debut was horrible imo!!!

NBCSN come back😢😢😢😭😭😭😭😭😢😢😢

SOFT

Well the Carolina Panthers and Canes are having fun with it. They have embraced the travesty that is ESPN’s sports coverage (non football or basketball).

Making fun of Buffalo and Toronto is fun though

They also called PK Subban a "star" player

But in all seriousness, Im excited for ESPN. I know their debut wasn't good, but they will help with viewership and improve as time goes on

Well, the Chrips were hilarious to me. I loved how they bugged every team in the league pretty much lol. The playoff drought chirps, the cup drought, talking about teams who sucked it was hilarious. But the mess ups with team names and positions was tough. Not a good look for your first broadcast. Doesn’t help that they likely had two guys who didn’t know a ton about hockey there. Why not bring in some of the people they actually hired for the hockey side of things?

Macklemore should have presented the whole thing

No that is not something I imagined ever saying. Yes, he was objectively better than those pathetic excuses for analysts. If they had Macklemore up there playing the crowd and announcing the picks, add some mini fireworks after every announcement, that place woulda been bouncing

Making fun of teams is entertaining, that part is fine. The wrong positions and team names were kinda bad though - not at great start on that front

Yes they were making fun of teams, which is okay, but what are they going to say when they don’t make the playoffs? Haha. I mean, if they don’t do massive upgrades, there is no way they are making the playoffs.

Honestly making fun of some of the teams is fine, but Chris Fowler clearly knew nothing about hockey. Thats the embarrassing part. The celebrities they invited disrespected the sport. Like when Kemp said "he only watches the fights" like come on. At least pretend to care about hockey, a sport you just paid to broadcast.

There was clearly zero effort into the broadcast. I felt like the NHL did a disservice to ESPN at first when they didn't fix the leak issue, but as soon as I saw the broadcast, it was clear no one cared at ESPN anyway. Which is a huge missed opportunity all around, because there was so much intrigue, if everything was secret, and you brought in real hockey broadcasters for analysis, the shock that people and fans would've had to the picks and lack of trades as a surprise would've been great.

It was a team effort of disaster.

I don't hate Fowler but hes not the guy for that. Weeks should have been doing the hosting and not being wasted with all the gimmick work.

Very well said!!

That’s similar to (in Canada) how Sportsnet has rights to most Leafs games, and there are hardly ever any games on TSN. TSN does the games infinitely better.

Honestly, the Carolina Panthers sounds better to me.

I don’t like the Leafs. Reason? In 2011, instead of cheering on the Canucks, Toronto media was cheering for the Bruins.

The Toronto media back then must have been messed up. I wouldn’t cheer for the Bruins ever, unless it helped the Leafs clinch something. The only team I hate as much as Boston is Montreal.

They just hired Torts as a studio analyst. That's a great move. On another note, I'm hoping they leave politics alone. They have a history of politicizing sports and that's only going to alienate a lot of hockey fans.

I also hope they don't neglect the Canadian teams in their coverage. They need to realize that many hockey fans, myself included, want to see teams like TOR, MTL, and EDM as much as, if not more than, big market US based teams like CHI, BOS, and LAK. I want to see them focus on star players and great rivalries more than big market teams.

I think for politics just stick with the NHL, you won’t lose more fans by siding with a view the NHL already has or don’t side with a stupidly outrageous view