NHL Releases 2009-10 National TV Schedule

The NHL released its national television schedule on August 20 for the 2009-10 season. Thanks to the "Winging It In Motown" blog for dissecting when the Wings will be on a national broadcast.

Some interesting items:

• The Red Wings and the Washington Capitals have the most games nationally televised with Boston and Pittsburgh coming in at 21 nationally televised games each.
• The first Wings game that will be seen nationally is against the St. Louis Blues on October 2 on the Versus network.
• Last game April 11, 2010 at the Chicago Blackhawks on NBC.
• The following item is only interesting to the Hat Trick...the Wings will be seen nationally at the Columbus Blue Jackets on my birthday...December 28!

Even with lowered expectations for the Wings upcoming season the Hat Trick is happy to see that the Wings still hold fan attention for nationally televised games. The Hat Trick is also personally selfish for this since a cost-cutting measure became necessary and I cancelled by NHL Center Ice package which I had for the sole reason of seeing all the Red Wings games. Now if only the Hat Trick can figure out how to watch some of these games on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada and avoid the Versus/NBC crowd altogether!