It's April 21st, 10pm Eastern and 7pm Pacific time. Your Los Angeles Kings are in the playoffs for the first time in 8 years and you are about to watch them take on the Canucks for game 4 of the playoffs. A win gives you a commanding 3 games to 1 lead. Turn on the TV and what do you see? Boston and Buffalo in an overtime that may never end. Add to that, people that own the NHL Centre Ice Package got blacked out with a message that read, catch game on Versus.
This was the case for many Kings fans (and Canucks fans) that live outside of their teams market. One of HockeySureShot's members made the 6 hour drive from San Francisco to LA for game 3 of this series. This same fan has bought hats, jerseys, tickets to games, bought the NHL Centre Ice Package and now sits at home missing the entire first period of the Kings and Canucks.
"Don't miss a single second of the NHL Playoffs" is what you hear when you call Versus to complain or simply ask what is going on. Versus is owned by Comcast, who owns about 400,000 channels. No good answer was given to me as to why the late game, (in this case LA vs Vancouver) can't be shown temporarily on another channel or why their exclusive rights screw over fans that pay $140 for the Centre Ice Package.
When calling the NHL, they agree with my complaints and say that next year is the last year of the contract with Versus and that they are not happy with what has been going on. Versus needs to find a way to get every game on TV for their entirety.
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