I think there's an obvious push from the bosses to have all the commentators act as though every play of every game is the best thing all season. There's a pseudo-excitement being pushed down our throats about how great the product is, how lucky we are to be watching these generational players.
The crowd of commentators who want to see "no defense" are part of this, mistaking scoring for good hockey.
And I think Cassie has been told to make the colour about this stuff. Last Flames/Oilers game, Gudbranson smashed McDavid pretty good behind the Flames net. Cassie pointed it out, they had a replay of it, and her narrative was like, "Watch Connor the warrior here, he skates back up the ice looking for some retribution, and Gudbrandson doesn't see him coming."
Except Gudbrandson DID see him coming, and gave him a sly elbow for his troubles.
And Cassie's commentary, watching the replay, just died off, cuz it was just.... wrong. It was surreal. Like, someone whispered in her ear "Talk up this play by McDavid".
While I don't love her voice or her style, I think she knows tons about hockey. But I think the issue that this all revolves around is that we have network and hockey executives trying to build excitement and attract new viewers, and it's somewhat at the expense of the existing educated viewers. There's narrative building going on big time. It's not enough to watch a great player, we have to be told a hundred times that we are witnessing history. Takes the fun out. And I'm sure it's driving a lot of these educated intelligent broadcasters a little batty too.
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