ESPN shows a splitscreen between Sunday Night Baseball and a Stanley Cup Playoff game. ESPN is coming under heavy criticism for its coverage of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and a lopsided baseball game on Sunday night.
ESPNMLBNHLBy Michael Dixon on

ESPN had two games to cover on Sunday night. The first was the Sunday Night Baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox. The second was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers. The transition from one to the other did not go smoothly.

The two events were scheduled to begin roughly three hours apart. So, the hope was that the baseball game in Boston would be over by the time the puck was set to drop in Edmonton. It didn’t work out that way.

The baseball game was a blowout. St. Louis dominated from the outset and routed Boston, 9-1. Despite that, ESPN stayed with the baseball game on its main channel, moving the hockey game to ESPN 2 — something John Buccigross even apologized for on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Buccigross/status/1657927557545865216

ESPN used a split screen to try to keep everyone updated on the hockey game.

That also went poorly. Because while the baseball game was a laugher, the early moments of the hockey game were thrilling. Vegas’ Reilly Smith scored 24 seconds into the game. Edmonton answered with a goal from Connor McDavid 55 seconds into the game and another from Warren Foegele 2:43 in.

https://twitter.com/EdmontonOilers/status/1657934077750812673

Hockey fans were already frustrated about the game starting at 10 p.m. ET, which is 8 p.m. in Edmonton.

ESPN sticking with a blowout baseball game while relegating what ended up being the thrilling start to a potential elimination game in the Stanley Cup Playoffs did nothing to ease those tensions.

By the same token, baseball fans, particularly those in St. Louis, were not particularly thrilled to have that game on a split screen.

It also sparked a question. Why couldn’t either the baseball game or hockey game just be shown on ESPN2? That would have allowed Sunday Night Baseball to keep its normal time slot, while the hockey game could have started at a more tenable hour without juggling the broadcasts around.

This is one of the busiest times of the year on the sports calendar. That’s going to lead to some occasional awkwardness in scheduling, especially with networks that have broadcasting rights to more than one sport. And if the scheduling conflict was created by something like a thrilling baseball game going deep into extra innings, this would be easier to understand.

ESPN got a little unlucky that a blowout MLB game didn’t end 10 minutes earlier. Even still, this was entirely avoidable.

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