Mike Milbury out at NBC
Sports…
Back in August, I posted an
article about Mike Milbury and how “he needs to go” after his controversial
comments about women (read article here). On January 11, NBC Sports announced
Milbury will not be returning for the 2021 NHL season. NBC Sports also
announced Mike Babcock will be joining the broadcast team. I don’t think that
was a smart move by NBC.
The reason why I say that is
that Mike Babcock has been known to be verbally abusive towards players during
his tenure with the Detroit Red Wings. Both Chris Chelios and Brendan Shanahan
have stated how Babcock had been verbally abusive towards players—with Chelios
giving an example of an incident involving Babcock and Johan Franzen during a
game and Franzen ended up confirming the incident did take place in a response
to CBC (read full article here.) What was NBC thinking when they decided to bring Babcock on? Did they
not learn anything after the backlash of Milbury’s derogatory comments about
women (among other comments about two NHL players)? Apparently not. I’m not a
fan of Babcock as a coach. How long is it going to be before Babcock makes
similar remarks to the ones that got Milbury in trouble and what NBC is going
to do? Only time will tell on that one…
And no, I’m not impressed with
Mike Babcock on NHL on NBC either. I would
rather watch Pierre McGuire than Mike Babcock at this point…
Then, on January 22, NBC
Sports announced that its NBCSN cable channel will be shutting down at the end
of 2021 and their sports programming is going to be moved to USA Network and to
NBC’s Peacock streaming service. That will make things interesting since the
NHL’s current TV deal with NBC in the United States ends at the end of the
2021-2022 season…
The Goaltending situation with
the Wild…
The Wild’s season opened on
January 14th and as expected, Cam Talbot is the Wild’s starting
goalie with Kaapo Kahkonen and the #2 goalie. With Alex Stalock now out
indefinitely, we’re going to see Kahkonen get starts for the Wild due to the
condensed 56 game schedule. So far, he’s 3-3-0 with a 2.86 GAA and .903 SV%. Are
we going to see Stalock at all this season? At this point, who knows. There is
no indication on how long he is going to be out for (article on situation with
Stalock is here) or even what his injury is.
So, for the time being, the
Wild are going with the tandem of Talbot and Kahkonen…and I’m perfectly okay
with that.
Marco Rossi may NOT be in a
Wild Uniform this season…
After Austria’s dismal
performance in the World Juniors tournament in Edmonton, Marco Rossi looked all
set to join the Minnesota Wild, the team that drafted him with the 9th
overall pick. (My post introducing him is here).
Well, Wild fans are going to
have to wait longer to see Rossi in a Wild uniform. Wild fans waited for FIVE years
before Kirill Kaprizov joined the team, so we’re used to waiting.
Shortly after joining the Wild
in Saint Paul, Rossi was put on injured reserve with an “upper body injury.” Granted,
we all know Austria had a dismal performance in the World Juniors, and before
that, he only appeared in one game with the ZSC Lions in Switzerland before a
league-wide outbreak happened. On January 29, it was announced that Rossi was
heading home to Austria for six weeks. I certainly was stratching my head,
thinking what exactly is going on. Then the Wild announced the next day that
his “upper body injury” was actually complications from having COVID-19 back in
November.
Say what? Let me get this
straight—Rossi had COVID back in November. He was then cleared by Zurich and
then Team Austria to play in the World Juniors in December? That doesn’t seem
right and a couple of weeks ago it now comes out he’s had complications? So,
why the rush to get him to play? I know he was probably the biggest name on
Team Austria and that the World Juniors would have given North American hockey
fans a good look at him. Seriously, couldn’t this kid get some time off to rest
and recover?
Rossi is supposed to
return to Saint Paul some time in March. All I have to say is let this kid get
some rest and time off to fully recover. There is NO rush to get him in a Wild
uniform in this condensed season
Sources:
Hockey Wilderness: https://www.hockeywilderness.com/2021/1/29/22256584/minnesota-wild-marco-rossi-injury-austria-center-covid-19