Buffalo Sabres play-by-play announcer Rick Jeanneret appeared to, metaphorically, put the puck in the National Hockey League team’s court at the end of the team’s 1-0 loss to Pittsburgh Saturday afternoon in the season finale.
At the end of the MSG telecast, Jeanneret thanked the behind-the-scenes personnel who have worked with him before adding: “I hope to have the opportunity to work with them again.”
That suggests Jeanneret wants to return next season.
Jeanneret and Mark Preisler, the executive vice president of Pegula and Sports Entertainment, said last week they planned to talk about next season sometime after the season ended.
Saturday’s season-ending broadcast did a terrific job celebrating Jeanneret’s 50 years as the team’s broadcaster.
Jeanneret was praised so often that by game’s end he joked that it felt like a eulogy.
One highlight was an intermission interview of Jeanneret by analyst Rob Ray. Ray had Jeanneret reminiscing about the end of the 2005-06 season in which an injured Sabres team lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Carolina Hurricanes. Jeanneret revealed he went into the Sabres locker room – which is something he rarely did – after the game to talk to players and saw players crying. He added he cried, too.
In April 2020, Jeanneret said he had “a feeling there won't be a 51st season … It has to come to an end.
“I'm getting older, I'm getting slower, I'm getting all kinds of things that are slowing things down a little bit,” said Jeanneret at the time. “You’ve got to come to grips with this. You know you can't go forever.”
However, he appears to have changed that position with Saturday’s statement. And if he doesn’t come back to do at least some games next season, many Sabre fans will be crying, too.
...
It wouldn’t be surprising if the NFL schedule announcement Wednesday night carried on the NFL Network and ESPN2 is a ratings hit in Western New York.
After all, Buffalo was the No. 10 rated TV market in the country for the coverage of the NFL draft even though the Bills picked 30th in the first round. Buffalo averaged a 5.7 household rating for the three days of the draft.
If you want to get a preview of the schedule announcement, you should head to a recent podcast by WGR’s Sal Capaccio with Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning. It was an enlightening interview.
Here are some of my takeaways from listening to the 46-minute podcast with North.
The biggest loser locally could be WIVB-TV (Channel 4), the local CBS affiliate that usually gets the largest share of revenue-producing Bills games.
The Bills are likely to get four or five prime-time games, which means they won’t be airing on Channel 4 since the prime-time packages are on WGRZ-TV’s network, NBC, WKBW-TV’s network ABC and ESPN and the streaming service Amazon Prime. It remains to be seen which local channel gets the broadcast rights to Amazon’s Thursday night package.
North also told Capaccio that the NFL no longer considers CBS as the network to carry American Football Conference Sunday afternoon games and Fox to carry National Football Conference games.
North said the schedule will be “slanted” toward giving CBS games of the AFC and Fox will be “slanted” toward getting NFC games.
That means WIVB could lose even more Bills games that it would normally receive and Fox affiliate WUTV could get more than the two Bills home games it normally receives annually.
If I read North correctly, it appears that the Bills could get one of the prime-time games Thursday, Sunday or Monday night on opening weekend by virtue of their strong 2020 season that ended with a loss in the AFC title game to Kansas City.
He told Capaccio the Bills would even be in the conversation for playing Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay in NBC’s prime-time season opener and added Tom Brady’s team would have several other options on opening weekend.
A matchup between Bills nemesis Brady and Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who finished in second place for MVP last season, certainly would be appealing in Western New York.
I don’t see a better game on Tampa’s schedule, though home games with the New York Giants, the Dallas Cowboys and a road game at the New England Patriots deserve consideration because of market size (Giants), name brand (Cowboys) and Brady history (Patriots).
The Bills-Kansas City games featuring Allen versus Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Buffalo’s two games with New England also should get prime-time consideration.
One of the bigger issues for the NFL is how to schedule Green Bay in prime time now that league MVP Aaron Rodgers may not be a Packer by the start of the season. The Green Bay game against Kansas City and quarterback Patrick Mahomes would likely be a prime-time game if Rodgers remained with the Pack. Without Rodgers, it would be just another game.
One of North’s more interesting comments was his confirmation that the NFL plans to carry one of its first-round playoff games on Monday night rather than have them all play on Saturday and Sunday of opening weekend.
