NHL coverage: XM or Sirius?

My wife is giving me satellite radio for Christmas, so naturally she wants to know which one to surprise me with.

It looks to me like XM has a far better selection of games. Does anyone out there have it, and is there any question which one is better for generalized hockey broadcasts? I'm planning on getting it both for the car and home.

I have Sirius and got it because they carry the NFL and I need that for my annual holiday road trip from Indiana --> Florida. I have had Sirius for just over a year now and I love it (almost as much as the Direct TV ).

I primarily listened to the NHL broadcasts in the spring, during the playoffs, and I noticed that you sometimes only had one broadcast option per game (rather than having the option of both home and away). During the other times, I wasn't too fussy what game I listened to and usually tuned into the first game I found. At home, I'll listen to games through NHL.com.

For the sports broadcasts (NFL, NHL etc) Sirius will use the "talk radio stations", so be sure check the schedule on-line to find out what channel(s) the game you want to listen to is on, otherwise you will be doing a lot of channel surfing.

The Sirius car radio subscription does include internet access, but that is only for the music stations and some talk radio (the NFL network, Howard Stern, Martha Stewart) and not any of the live sporting events.

If you are more of a baseball fan rather than football, you will probably want XM radio. XM has the MLB rights. If you are still on the fence, Sirius will begin airing NASCAR in January .

FWIW, I have been quite happy with Sirius; no complaints at all.

NHL will be XM exclusive after either this season or next.

Sirius has more sports, including NASCAR in 2007, but XM has the NHL and it will be NHL exclusively on XM come 2007.

Some recent cars have XM or Sirius adapters that can be controlled by the head unit (car radio) but usually one or the other not both. If that doesn't work and if you have a car with an LCD display in the dash, say if you've got a nav system, you may want to check out the black boxes that let you trick the car into working with the satellite radio adapter. It's a much neater installation all around and easier to use. But it shoots the cost from say $100 to $300 to $500.

Check out Crutchfield, www.crutchfield.com, which has a pretty thorough what-fits-my-car listing.

XM also has all MLB games.