Updates on Previous Posts

 

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 14^th 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 9^th 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

Mike Milbury needs to go

I personally did not hear what Mike Milbury said on Thursday’s (August 20^th) NBC’s Islanders-Capitals broadcast; however, I did read about it. Yes, it’s taken me a few days to figure out what I wanted to say about this. I have never been a fan of Mike Milbury and there have been times where I have either muted my TV when he’s on or changed the channel until the opening face-off. 

This is not the first time that Mike Milbury has made asinine comments like the one he made Thursday night. Everyone who watches hockey knows that. He’s made several since the NHL playoffs began back on August 1^st. The two that stand out to me were his comments about Maple Leafs defenseman Jake Muzzin (who was taken off the ice on a stretcher during a game with the Columbus Blue Jackets) and Bruins goaltender Tuuka Rask (who left Toronto to go back to Boston to be with his family and was later announced there was an undisclosed medical emergency involving one of his three kids). I’m not even going to quote what he said about those two because it’s not worth repeating in my opinion. He was out of line on both of those comments. Luckily, Jake Muzzin was not seriously injured and was released from the hospital the next day.

Then, there was Thursday night and his asinine comment about women. After I read what he said, my first thought was why does NBC Sports still have this guy on the air? NBC Sports was real quick to fire Jeremy Roenick earlier this year after comments he made about an on-air colleague. Why didn’t NBC Sports do the same to Mike Milbury?

The Athletic’s Katie Strang summed it up the best in her article “Do We Honestly Have No Better Options than Mike Milbury? (The link to her article is ).

“The way he spoke about women being distractions is pretty coded language for what he feels women are good for, and that’s abhorrent.

Think about how insulting and insidious those comments are. Does Milbury not understand how many women probably were integral in making sure this whole bubble hockey experiment works? From the league? The NHLPA? The NHL clubs? His own broadcast? There are women doing advance scouting and using data analysis to ensure their teams are prepared to play. There are women working to handle every logistical nightmare within this bizarre environment and every awkward Zoom press conference we see. There are likely women gathering, distilling and providing him with the very information he uses each broadcast!

And let’s not forget those who are sacrificing and doing the yeoman’s work outside the bubble, too. There are women who are balancing school and work while plagued by uncertainty about a partner who will be gone for an unknown length of time and incurring risks we probably have not even begun to understand. There are women who are supporting entire families on their own without a partner to help shoulder the exhausting work that entails, especially amid a global pandemic.

Women are not distractions. They are essential.”

Even though the NHL was quick to condemn Milbury’s asinine comment with an official statement on Friday, all NBC Sports stated that the network was “disappointed with Mike’s insensitive comment.” 

Mike Milbury did issues a statement that read like someone else wrote it, stating that he “didn’t want my presence to interfere with the athletes as they try to win the greatest trophy in sports” after stepping aside for the remainder of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Mike Milbury apparently has a history of making “misguiding remarks” about gender sexuality and sexual assault, according to Deadline.com’s Tom Tapp, even though Tapp didn’t go into further detail (which is probably a good thing at this point). It’s obvious that he has never learned from his

As someone who has grown up around hockey, has seen a women’s college hockey powerhouse form (at the University of Minnesota), and whose first job while still in high school was working at the old Met Center in Bloomington, MN before the North Stars moved to Dallas and become the Dallas Stars—I was disgusted in Mike Milbury’s comment from Thursday night. If it were my call, Milbury would have been fired the next day. However it’s not my call.

It’s time that NBC Sports step up and fire Mike Milbury. In today’s world, there is no place for the asinine and disrespectful comments regarding women, players, etc. Hockey fans watching these broadcasts deserve better and it’s obvious that Mike Milbury isn’t going to change and learn from this when he’s been given plenty of opportunities to do so over the past several years. To put it simply, it’s time for Mike Milbury to go. 

Sources:

Katie Strang: Do We Honestly Have No Better Options Than Mike Milbury?

Deadline.com NBC Sports Benches Mike Milbury