Where's My Stanley Cup Finals?

Of all of the postseasons, the Stanley Cup playoffs are the best.  They are (a) easy to follow, schedule-wise, (b) reseed between rounds, (c) filled with more tradition than anyone else and (d) nowhere to be seen.

That's a shame.

I'm not going to hate on VS.  VS [formerly OLN] did a great job getting the NHL and trying to take a niche sports channel into more of the mainstream.  When watching the games on VS, they do a good job with the entire broadcast that it is a shame that they get dumped on.  It's not their fault.

The problem lies with the fact that no one knows where it is ... and no one cares to find out.  I love watching the Stanley Cup finals ... but until I went online to check out something, I forgot they were on.  I then had to search through my myriad of DirecTV channels to find where it was [channel 608].

Screw it.  I'll watch the Spurs and Jazz.

We all have our beefs with ESPN, but they were making the NHL for the last decade or so.  ESPN poured a lot of money into the rights for it ... and they did a bang up job trying to sell it.  Without the NHL, ESPN has tossed it to the side and let the Arena Football League [which it now televises] take it's spot.  Now, NHL highlights are buried on SportsCenter, NHL2Night is dead and Barry Melrose's mullet doesn't get the TV time it once did. 

Imagine how big Sidney Crosby would be if ESPN was pimping him?

Sure, the Worldwide Leader didn't have the NBA and it blew up ... but the NHL ain't the NBA.  An overtime playoff game was dumped for horse racing.  Horse racing!!!!!  I mean, the one thing sports nets have done is keep showing a game until it's over.  Well, unless it is the NHL.

The NHL needs to come back to ESPN who helped keep it alive.  Sure, they can show games on VS too [just as the NBA has games on TNT, NBATV and ESPN] ... but use ESPN's marketing genius to help pull the league back up from the bottom of the barrel.