ECAC Hockey on TWC in Ithaca

Perhaps they've hemorrhaged enough subscriptions to DISH Network and DirecTV without UPN programming, but whatever the reason, Time Warner Cable in Ithaca will be carrying this weekend's ECAC tournament.

TWC told me they will have the entire ECAC tournament (in the past they've skipped the consolation game) plus the women's final on Sunday. Excellent! (Pity Cornell's not in the running for that one any longer.)

When I determine what channels the games will be on in Ithaca, I'll pass that along.

Won't be Grady's play-by-play, Ken, but the picture will be better than AM or FM can offer!

I'll be staying here, taking care of business, and will be glad to see the games on the tube. I thought the camerawork in Saturday Yale game was relatively good, but the frequent loss of signal pretty much trashed the broadcast.

For the Cornell games, I'll likely mute the TV and listen to Grady.

Let's Go Red !!

Ken '71

I have yet to check my TiVo, which recorded the game on Empire via DISH Network, to see if I also had the signal losses others have mentioned. I picked Empire because it had a cleaner signal than NESN earlier in the day. Hope it wasn't a mistake.

Word from One Who'd Know is that the ECAC tournament will be on channel 77 on Ithaca's Time Warner Cable this weekend. Won't include the consolation game after all, though. That's just not televised, so TWC can't carry it whether they want to or not.

I just watched my tape, and it was fine off of Empire on Corning Time Warner. Lost the signal for about 5 seconds in the first, but they cut right to commercial and when they returned it was good the rest of the game.

Just thought I'd comment on the broadcast, since it's fresh on my mind.

Bob Norton cracks me up. He used to be so bad that he was annoying a few years ago, but now he's so bad it's funny. He's like a cartoon character of himself.

1) his obsession with rattling off every prep school of each player. It took him 3 sentences in his pre-game comments to mention Chris Higgins's prep school.

2) His pronounciations aren't even close anymore. Bob stumbling over Tymchyshyn so many times in '97 got on my nerves, but now it's ridiculous. I know some of the hockey names look difficult, but when you know that you'll be saying them you'd think a professional would do some work ahead of time. Knoepfli got butchered several different ways: "Nap-ful" "Ca-noop-fly" "Nope-flee"...

3) He got the calls on the first 3 CU goals wrong. He hailed Kozier for the deflection of the first goal, and was flabbergasted when it was announced as Hornby's. (Kozier was just crossing the blue line). He praised Wieckowski for his great play in the corner to set up Francis on the 2nd, when it was Knoepfli. Later, he said "great work by #14 G-noop-full" And he credited Yale's Mike Klema on McRae's PPG with an assist. Understandable mistake, since he was glancing at the wrong roster and read #27. He corrected himself and gave credit to "Nu-flee".

But at the same time, I'll give him credit because he did come up with some good analysis of plays on the telestrator, recognized as the game progressed the great defensive play of players like Palahicky, had good intermission interviews with both teams' Coaches and Captains, and kept raving about the Lynah atmosphere.

And our online community got some mention right at the start of the 2nd. The TV guys related the story about the mythical Cornell committment from Higgins that was erroneously reported in the Sun, and Schafer requesting that an apology be sent. The TV guys said disparagingly, "it was picked up from one of these chat rooms online..."

Thanks for supplying the Norton-isms...I can hardly wait til the weekend. In the past he had fun with Clarkson names like Carl Drakensjo ("DRAK-en-show". It came out something like "Dragon-shoe".

And I guess Ellis-Toddington just doesn't sound like it looks. Never had a problem with Mitchell or Murphy though...

Well, he does know the game...I can deal with the malaprops because of the knowledge and his occasional reference to Len Ceglarski and his apparent favorite ECAC defenseman, Steve Warr.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bob Norton is the Dick Vitale of College Hockey, and for that all college hockey fans should consider ourselves lucky!

i wonder if the games will be on in syracuse. anyone know???

If you have Empire Sports Network or NESN in Syracuse, yes. Time Warner Cable in Ithaca doesn't carry either network regularly, but picks them up for the ECAC tournament due to local interest.

Full TV schedule:
[www.ecac.org]

I just got home and I'm watching my TiVo recording now while dumping it to tape. The image quality is great other than a little bit of video compression artifacting created by the TiVo.

Just watched the instant replay of Noe's first-period goal on the rebound. Nice job, actually.

It's really cool how they provided a game clock in the info graphic in the top left corner. They're digitally doing the ECAC logo and Yale and Cornell scores, and inserting a tiny shot of OUR SCOREBOARD that they got from a small, stationary camera in the press box on Saturday night. I knew they were doing it, but it's cool to see the seamless result. Just a tad dark.

Oops, there goes the satellite signal loss people were talking about. Yeah, nothing your local provider could have done about this.