NHL on OLN

I grew up in Vermont. Kids (okay, mostly boys) would routinely walk to school with a hockey stick flung over their shoulder, and their skates dangling from the end of the stick. We townies would routinely pack Gutterson Field House to watch the UVM Catamounts play hockey. And I lived in the fuzzy border between Bruins fans and Canadiens fans.

(All this is to tell you anti-sports geeks to just shut up; hockey is a large part of my culture.)

As virtually nobody noticed, the NHL did not play a single game last season, as both the players and the owners believed that hockey was a larger part of our culture than it actually is.

To underscore this, ESPN and ABC allowed their contract with the NHL to simply end, and made no efforts to renew it. And this was before the strike/lock-out.

Well, the players and owners reached an agreement, and the NHL will play again.

But the only coverage they're going to get is on OLN, the "Outdoor Life Network". You probably have that channel on your standard cable package, but unless you watched the Tour de Lance (er, "France"), you've probably never actually tuned to it.

An indoor sport is going to be covered by the Outdoor Life Network.

Can you say "desperate"? Can you say it with three syllables?