Let's Talk Sports - Bitter Taste: ESPN Snubs Fallen Hockey Players In Year-End Review

Though it?s true our neighbours to the south are known to sometimes gleam instinctive arrogance and revert to dated stereotypes in reference to our country?s love affair with its most beloved pastime, our nation?s undying passion for the game of hockey is clearest when it?s mistreated ? much the way a certain American sports television network recently did.

ESPN SportsCenter aired its ?In Memoriam? segment this week during their annual Year in Review special and honoured the deaths of Al Davis, Dan Wheldon and Joe Frazier, among others. By all accounts it looked like a genuine good-natured gesture by the folks at ESPN to take time out to remember all the losses suffered by the sports world this year.

The problem? Not a single hockey player was mentioned.

Now granted, ESPN is notorious ? especially in Canadian circles ? for dedicating as much airtime to hockey as it does to obscure Japanese sports where no one is really ever certain of what is going on, but even that doesn?t account for one of the worst snubs since Samuel L. Jackson was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Pulp Fiction in 1994.

Yes, it?s personal. No offence, Martin Landau.

In what could easily be classified as the most tragic year in hockey history, ESPN neglected to even mutter the names of former NHL enforcers Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak, who all died over the summer before the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash that decimated an entire KHL franchise and shook fans from North America to Russia and everywhere in between.

But hey, glad to see Tim Tebow got enough airtime to start his own spin-off if the whole football thing doesn?t work out.

It?d be easy to blow a fuse and go on a rant about how Americans don?t care about hockey and that stuff like this shows why they?re not deserving of owning 23 of the 30 NHL franchises currently in operation. However, the reality is that there is a very strong contingent of American hockey fans that has been integral to the success of the league and it is those real devotees that should not be persecuted for ESPN?s negligence.

The exclusion of hockey player deaths from the In Memoriam segment lies solely on the shoulders of ESPN SportsCenter staff, who either didn?t do their research or simply overlooked one of the most devastating years in the game?s lengthy timeline because they were too busy with baseball, football and basketball.

If that?s the case, don?t claim you?re the ?worldwide leader in sports? but instead the ?worldwide leader in American sports.?

There are plenty of hockey markets ? Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, to name a few ? in the United States that ooze?hockey, but the fact is the majority of Americans still turn to baseball, football and basketball as their primary sports on any given night.

ESPN may have screwed up big time and completely ignored a section of the United States that loves hockey just as much as Canadians do, but to call them out on that and generalize them as a nation would be unfair to say the least.

And if ESPN really cares about doing a better job with its hockey coverage, they need not look any further than guys like Pierre LeBrun and Craig Custance, who?ve done a great job at ESPN.com.

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