What’s On In Sports, This Weekend: February 18th-20th

Normally, the big event of the third weekend of February would be either the NBA All-Star Game (Sunday, 7 p.m., TNT) or the Daytona 500 (Sunday, Noon, Fox). This year, however, NBC has thrown an event into the mix to make it more interesting.

The network has dubbed Sunday “Hockey Day In America,” an obvious interpretation of the name for their football coverage. The main broadcast network, in association with it’s new cable cousin, Versus, will present a total of five games on Sunday. The first games will begin at 12:30, and will feature one of three games: Washington Capitals at Buffalo Sabres, Philadelphia Flyers at New York Rangers or Detroit Red Wings at Minnesota Wild. The second game on NBC will start at 3:30, and will be broadcast nationally, featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Chicago Blackhawks.

Mixing things up for the nightcap, Versus will nationally broadcast the Heritage Classic, the first outdoor game in Canada since 2003. The Montreal Canadiens will play the Calgary Flames at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, with the puck drop scheduledREAD MORE

Call of the Day: One Left Cross Does Not A Goalie Fight Make (VIDEO)

Following a ton of Pittsburgh fans on Twitter, I caught a series of tweets last night that went something like this: “GOALIE FIGHT!!!!!”

Consider my interest piqued.

And consider me disappointed, too. Sure, there was a “goalie fight” at the end of the Penguins 3-0 victory over the Islanders last night, but it wasn’t exactly a history-making tussle. In fact, Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro got walloped by one punch. One punch!

Seriously!?! NHL.com billed the video as “Goalies gone Wild.” Hardly. ESPN.com put a link on their front page that reads, “Goalie brawl mars Pens’ win” which is wrong on two levels if you know what a brawl is and know that your team winning an in-game fight never mars a victory, it enhances it.

And no offense to the Penguins fans excitedly tweeting, but that’s not a goalie fight. That’s your backup goalie knocking the crap out of DiPietro to endear himself to your fanbase forever, but it’s not exactly a “fight.” Totally blame DiPietro for having a glass jaw. Man alive that was disappointing.

This does, however, giveREAD MORE

DL501: We’re Back, With Wyshynski on SportsTalk Radio, Winter Classic, All-Star Pick’em

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Be honest, you thought we were never coming back, didn’t you. 500 and that’s it. Hell, I thought we were never coming back too. But there are bills to pay and swanky, drunken parties to justify, so here we are.

Here we are, in 2011, with GREG WYSHYNSKI FROM PUCK DADDY!!!!!!

I don’t know why I’m that excited. We barely even talk about Martin Brodeur’s demise (I do get in a ‘dead man skating’ line late in the show). But I love Wyshynski, mainly because I can have him on the show to talk about hockey and we don’t actually talk about hockey at all, really. Well, we do talk about the Winter Classic, what it means for the NHL and NBC and why the premise for Dan Shaughnessy’s SI.com column about it’s demise because of A LITTLE RAIN is about as lazy as column writing can get.

So yeah, there’s that. We also wonder how in the world a terrible Fiesta Bowl can get 10.8 million viewers and there’s a debate about whetherREAD MORE

Call of the Day: This Is A Strange Way For Versus To Promote A Show On HBO

During the first intermission of the Flyers-Penguins game on Tuesday night, the Versus hockey panel of Bill Patrick, Brian Engblom and Keith Jones spent an entire segment talking about whether or not the HBO cameras are to blame for the Washington Capitals recent woes (Keith Jones thinks the answer is yes). First, though, Patrick posed the question if the HBO cameras were, in any way, helping the Penguins on their — now defunct — 12-game win streak.

In a word, “no,” explained Engblom. The whole segment was a thinly-veiled promotion for the HBO series 24/7: Penguins/Capitals, which chronicles the weeks leading up to the Winter Classic for both teams. The show begins tonight on HBO.

Jones could be right in that having cameras in every meeting, practice and intermission could be hampering the free-wheeling side of some of the Caps. But the whole “hey, we’ve got a conspiracy on our hands, right…riiiiiiight” by Patrick was clearly the best way they could ‘naturally’ promote the show on another network.

That said, didn’t it feel a little like talking aboutREAD MORE

DL463: Greg Wyshynski on NHL vs. NBA, Jersey Sponsors & Alexander Ovechkin’s Miniature Giraffe

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Greg Wyshynski from Yahoo’s Puck Daddy joins the show to talk about the NHL and, in the process, completely dump on the NBA. I made a joke to start the show that we had him on the first day of the NBA season and he brought up the fact that he feels hockey is on an up-swing and NBA is going the other way. He mentioned this cover (right) and said that he feels SI could run that right now.

I think he’s nuts.

We talk about the fact that the NBA has more attention than at any time in recent memory and, yes, a lot of that attention is negative. While I don’t think that matters one bit to David Stern, Wyshynski thinks that the fact that there are far more teams you “love to hate” than actually love is a bad thing for the NBA. He suggests, and who am I to refute, the NHL doesn’t really  have that. It’s a likable group right now. I still think he’s nuts.

That leadsREAD MORE

Call of the Day, On Ice: TBS Announcers Should Take Excitement Lessons From Edmonton

Our Call of the Day was a link to the video for Tim Lincecum’s strikeout party against the Braves. While putting the post together, it turned more into a post on how boring the TBS announcers have been so far. Maybe they should think about hiring some of the announcers covering the Edmonton Oilers.

Here are two videos of Jordan Eberle’s first-career NHL goal. It’s a doozy, and both calls are awesome.

First, via NHL.com:

Next, via SportsNet.ca:

DL370: Greg Wyshynski Of Puck Daddy Talks Playoffs, Canada, Injuries and More

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I love the “and more” tag at the end of headlines. But this show with Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy is seriously one big “and more”. I love talking with him — it’s the two guys from Jersey thing — no matter what we discuss. This time, it’s mostly about hockey, with very little heavy lifting for those not following the action. It’s actually a decent primer for those who may want to start paying attention now. So get on it and listen. You’ll sound smart if you say whatever he says.

We talk about the timing of having a kid in the next few days (him, not me) and what his schedule will be like. He likens himself to a player that knocks up his wife after the season. Something about a small window, but I didn’t probe. Wait…

We talk at length about the pending Winnipeg situation and get into the deep-roots of Wyshynski’s total anti-Canada stance. It’s amazing how much he hates Canada.

We also talk a lot about theREAD MORE

DL369: Boucher, Online Video, Cushing, AP Voters, McNabb, Davies & More Media Bitching

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The headline basically says it all. And I wish we knew about the latest Cushing details before we recorded. Alas…

DL 338: American Sportswriters Return, Hockey Finale, Gander, Spying & Anderson Cooper’s Soul

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If you get the chance today, please read my Press Coverage column at The Sporting Blog. It’s about 2,500 words and much of it would be stuff I’d put in the space below. So read it there, please.

Today’s show talks about the return of the American sportswriter after a long fortnight in Canada. We also talk about the hockey finale as well as Gander, Newfoundland…the new symbol for NBC’s complete lack of respect for the American sports fan.

On non-sports topics, we discuss more about the spying on your kids story from last week — I think I dug my hole deeper here — and the news that Anderson Cooper may be in line for Katie Couric’s job, which leads to my point that cable news people have no souls.

DL 336: Canada vs. Russia, DL on SAS on BWest, Snow & The Culmination of Online Curling

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Let’s have a short recap today, shall we? Nick and I talk about the Canada-Russia hockey game last night. It seems Canada woke up from whatever US-induced haze they were in and seem like, literal, world beaters again. And we link to a report that Mike Milbury used the term “Eurotrash” to describe the way the Russians played. Bill Patrick and Jeremy Roenick seemed very taken aback by that. Is it that derogatory? Where does that term rank on the epithet list? Or was it more a shot at European HOCKEY player?

Soapbox:

Stephen A. Smith wrote a column about Brian Westbrook getting released, and turned it into yet another shot at the Eagles front office. So, if for no other reason than it’s fun to point out how ridiculous his words can be, we turn it into another shot at him. This could be a recurring show theme, so buckle up.

Housekeeping:

The big Blogs with Stones curling tournament is tonight. Here’s a bracket…vote to see who you think will win. Follow #blogswithstones onREAD MORE