I want to start with this:
And just in case they fix this, the NHL's carrier in Canada posted a video of the highlights between the Panthers and the Red Wings, an absolute must-win for the Red Wings, and an important game for seeding for the Panthers. And whatever unpaid intern or AI program managed to literally post the shootout highlights BEFORE the overtime highlights.
Where is the quality control? You would be fired from a car wash for doing your job this poorly. Imagine drying the car before you wash it.
But I want to use this thread also to talk about how pathetic the hockey highlights in Canada are currently.
Your options are:
1. Sportsnet or TSN highlights which are geared entirely towards bettors and will show like one goal per game for any games that don't feature Canadian teams.
2. The NHL's official highlights which are clearly created by an algorithmic program that simply hunts for shot highlights. They show zero penalties, fights, or hits (I suspect due to fear of lawsuits for profiting from concussions), and show nothing of the story of the game. If Ovechkin fought Crosby and then played air guitar while licking Tristan Jarry's mask, the OFFICIAL highlights would just randomly suddenly show the Penguins on the powerplay. They tell you nothing.
They don't high light career milestones, they don't highlight players who are having a good game. It's 10 minutes of soulless, algorithmic shots.
I'm a hockey junkie and so I watch them fairly regularly, and since I know almost every player in the league I can usually follow how the game went. But imagine trying to introduce a new fan to the sport?
3. Sportsnet's extended highlights which are a copy past of the NHL highlights but will sometimes randomly include a fight without including any context for what caused the fight or what it meant.
It makes it such a chore to follow the league.
I know they want to get their impressions and don't trust the attention span of fans so they post everything in 10 second clips if you want to see hits, fights, and narrative. but some of us like to follow the entire league and don't want to do it on TikTok one achingly stupid 20 second clip at a time.
20 years ago there was an NHL highlight show (and NHL on the fly during games) on the NHL network that would show you 4 or 5 minutes of highlights for every game and would carefully cultivate it so that it presented the story of the game. I used to look forward to it every night.
MLB highlights will carefully cut audio from both feeds and both radio feeds and edit things so that you know what's happening and why it's significant.
So we're now 20 years later and now the NHL has apparently decided that their highlights should be outsourced to an algorithm that scrapes highlight clips based on 'event' categories 'Find>'shot clip'>print. Seems to be the extent of the work.
It's like they actively don't want people to follow their sport.
You could hire like 30 people, maybe 15, who actually understand the game to watch the game and cut 10 minutes of highlights and the product would be so vastly superior it's incredible.
They could make their league so much more enticing by paying like 15 people 50k per year or less (if they were ethical it would be more, but we all know who we're dealing with). In a multibillion dollar league they choose to cut the dumbest of corners.
It's embarrassing.
