Free Canucks TV broadcast not winning me over to PPV

The Vancouver Canucks offer 16 games a season on pay-per-view, and the broadcasts are produced by “Canucks TV”. This year they’ve decided to offer two pre-season games for free, broadcast on Rogers SportsNet. I can only imagine that the idea here is to show Canucks fans what they’re missing if they’re not shelling out the big bucks for the pay-per-view games.

Unfortunately, based on the first one I’m definitely not impressed. While San Jose’s Shark Tank is certainly not the greatest rink with respect to camera location, the camera work in general was terrible. It seemed like they only had two cameras in the entire rink, and the whole broadcast was just flat. Vancouver personality Don Taylor did the play-by-play, and as much as his act works great for highlight reels, Canucks TV probably should have gone with either Jim Hughson, or simulcast the Team 1040 broadcast with John Shorthouse. Unfortunately simulcasts are a pain, and my bet is Canucks TV can’t afford Hughson (or he may be contractually prevented from doing it).

In any event, at this point I’d have to recommend that Canucks fans save their money and just listen to the pay-per-view games on the radio. And don’t get me started about the fact that the premium pay-per-view games aren’t offered in High Definition. Gary Bettman, you want to fix the NHL? Look at some of the obvious stuff like this.