NHL giving free cards to fans

This is probably old news for some of you but I just heard about it and thought I would share. Apparently, Upper Deck is sponsoring special “NHL Team Pack Giveaway Nights” during the second half of the season this year. Each of the teams involved will be given 10,000 six-player packs to hand out free of charge at the arenas on a specified night (see list below). There will also be 1,000 special chase cards produced for each team, comprising a 7 card set.

The program started last weekend with the New Jersey Devils. Martin Brodeur, Zach Parise, Jamie Langenbrunner, Patrik Elias, Colin White and Paul Martin comprised New Jersey’s 6 card set lineup. The 7th “chase” card featured Travis Zajac and could only be obtained through the team shop as a gift with purchase of any pack of 2009-10 NHL hockey cards. I wonder how many more packs they will sell so that people can get that elusive 7th card?

Here are the rest of the dates: (Obviously some are already passed) The chase cards are in parenthesis

Feb. 5, Chicago (Patrick Kane);
Feb. 6, Atlanta (Zach Bogosian), Boston (Zdeno Chara), Dallas (Mike Modano), Los Angeles (Drew Doughty) and Tampa (Martin St. Louis);
Feb. 11, Detroit (Nicklas Lidstrom);
Feb. 12, Colorado (Matt Duchene);
Feb. 13, Buffalo (Thomas Vanek), Calgary (Miikka Kiprusoff) and Phoenix (Ilya Bryzgalov);
March 2, Ottawa (Daniel Alfredsson), Pittsburgh (Marc-Andre Fleury) and Toronto (Luke Schenn);
March 6, New York Islanders (Kyle Okposo);
March 7, Nashville (JP Dumont);
March 9, Philadelphia (Chris Pronger);
March 12, Anaheim (Jonas Hiller) and Washington (Nicklas Backstrom);
March 13, Carolina (Cam Ward), Columbus (Steve Mason) and San Jose (Dany Heatley); and
March 21, Florida (Tomas Vokoun).

I'm definitely going to have my brother get me the Penguins set. Text message sent.

Hockey on ESPN again?

The NHL just struck a deal with NBC on a two year agreement for rights to televise games. Some are viewing this a some sort of power play so that both the NBC and Versus contracts come due at the same time. This would give them the ability to shop them back to ESPN/ABC. Perhaps that assumption is correct but as a hockey fan, I smell a rat.

I was one of the biggest proponents of keeping hockey on ESPN back before the lock up if not merely for the ability to watch a multitude of games. However, after seeing the job VS and NBC have done for the NHL, I'm not as convinced. I'm not arguing the fact that ESPN reaches a larger audience of sports fans. The case that I am making is the prioritizing of sports coverage that ESPN makes. If hockey was to go back on the network, it would play second fiddle to college baseball, professional poker, and women's basketball. That is not what the NHL needs in it's grand marketing scheme.

I, for one, would like to see more hockey on VS and NBC. Rather than pre-empt weeknight programming, NBC could take the day time weekend games and VS. could show the games during the week. From a marketing standpoint, there should be a lobby to get VS. on all the major cable providers so that there aren't major cities going without. I just don't want to see the sport I love mismanaged to the point of a footnote on the back page of the sports section. I'm not even opposed to shopping broadcasts to FOX (as long as they don't bring back the "Glow Puck".)