First Peek at NHL’s Online Broadcasts?

If you can remember all the way back to mid-July, you might remember that the Wall Street Journal broke a story (you have to be a subscriber to read that… bastards) about the NHL signing a deal with NeuLion Inc. The deal was supposed to “make live games available on the web starting next season.” By the looks of it, that may be closer to fruition than any of us realized.

Head on over to www.nhl.tv, and have a look for yourself. There’s two possible scenarios going on over there. Either we are witnessing the first makings of the NHL providing live games over the internet, or they are trying to open a portal to another universe. I would assume it’s a universe where a species similar to our own would pay millions for broadcast TV rights. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the former scenario is occurring, and as an Islander fan living in the southeast United States, this is a development that cannot possibly come soon enough. If this ends up turning out to be anything similar to MLB.tv, I might just start punching babies in blind excitement. OK, maybe I won’t be that excited, but I’ll be pumped.

Right now, when you click on the link at NHL.tv, it sends you to some error page. Looks like the portal to another universe isn’t ready yet. That’s fine, they’ve still got about three weeks to make it work before the season starts.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see about all of this, but isn’t speculation fun?

Here’s a fun parting fact. Neil Best of Newsday reports that NeuLion’s CEO is Nancy Li, the wife of Charles Wang, who owns the Islanders.

UPDATE: Well, apparently that link is working now. This is what pops up when you click it:

Ballhype – First Peek at NHL’s Online Broadcasts?
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