NBC over the weekend had a mixed bag for its opening telecasts of the NHL Conference Finals. The net drew a 1.7 overnight rating yesterday afternoon for Blackhawks-Ducks Game 1, down from a 1.9 rating for Kings-Blackhawks Game 1 in the same window. Both games had competition from NBA Playoff games. Meanwhile, NBC on Saturday afternoon drew a 1.7 overnight for Lightning-Rangers Game 1, up from a 1.2 for Rangers-Canadiens in the same window last year (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY: In Chicago, Ed Sherman noted NBC's broadcast team of Kenny Albert, Joe Micheletti and Brian Engblom are working Games 1 and 2 of the Blackhawks-Ducks series at Honda Center, while the team of Mike Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Pierre McGuire are "on the call" for the first two games of Lightning-Rangers at Madison Square Garden. But Emrick, Olczyk and McGuire "will be on hand at the United Center for Games 3 or 4" of Ducks-Blackhawks, as NBC "obviously wants its lead team to call games in the nation’s No. 1 market, New York, and in No. 3 Chicago" (CHICAGOTRIBUNE.com, 5/15).
THE DOC WILL SEE YOU NOW: In N.Y., Phil Mushnick wrote Emrick "managed to add special to special" during last Wednesday's Rangers-Capitals Game 7 on NBCSN. With the score tied, play stopped and "tension growing," Emrick "caught the feel, describing the crowd as stricken 'with a restless silence.'" His "on-the-fly descriptions -- descriptions of what we can see -- are so remarkably smack-on that they arrive neither redundant nor unnecessary." But Emrick's call on Wednesday "was no different than the call he would make of a midseason game or a preseason game on a walkie-talkie" (N.Y. POST, 5/17).
