I'm in the same generation as Stromboli (<--I'm leaving this autocorrect) and I don't mind him. He is just there to set things up and keep things moving which he does a fine job of. My impression is he's trying to the "hey, you guys are the experts here, but this regular hockey loving fan here thinks ____...is that accurate?" approach and for some reason it works for me.
Kypreos is way better now than previous years. I'm not sure what they did to him but maybe they sat him down and said "we don't want another blowhard, we have Cherry." They seem to have spayed/neutered him and made him less annoying...they are also keeping him away from "GM of the century" Doug M which helps keep him from going nutty. The banter between him, Hrudey, and Friedman works. It's not The Hotstove Lounge but it's not meant to be. It would be great if they could bring that back though but it seems those true hockey beat writers are going by the wayside.
I suspect RSN gets a ton of grief during the playoffs because of the local feeds they tapped into. Some of those broadcast feeds were ridiculously poor play by play and colour (plus the extra glass ads). The guys were calling it for a local audience not a national broadcast and would therefore only see it for one team or missed the play entirely. That maybe works if you're broadcasting for Islanders TV on Comcast but not if you're across Canada and on the NHLNetwork or whatever. My memory is muddy but I don't recall CBC doing that...perhaps because they weren't able to show every series and therefore you just got a few minutes of Mutt and Jeff in St. Louis for the last 4 minutes of that game after the Pittsburgh game ended and the L.A. game hadn't started yet. Having 2-3 channels show every game means we get exposed to the bad along with the good of being able to watch whatever game we want.
There is something different about the RSN broadcast from the TSN broadcast though. It's not the same crispness to it...I dunno. I'm still surprised TSN has kept basically their entire hockey crew and RSN hasn't managed to poach them away. Sprinkle in some Duthie, Cuthbert, some of their hockey experts and the broadcast could be great. The NBC weekend games with Doc, Keith Jones, and McGuire are damn good. Somehow bottle that chemistry and RSN would have a hope. We're also Canadian and are never happy unless we can complain.
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