ESPN’s issues with covering hockey have been well-documented on this site and elsewhere on the internet. If they don’t care much about the sport when it’s being played, it’s not a surprise that they’d get something wrong about the sport when even hockey people don’t care about hockey.
This is another example of that, though it’s more concerning than others.
SportsNation was talking about the Predators fan who didn’t check Twitter for a month and didn’t see that he won tickets to Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. Then, this happened:
This is pathetic @sportsnation. @Locs_n_Laughs says he used to follow the @PredsNHL when they were the Atlanta Thrashers…🤔 pic.twitter.com/9pD1zEqELO
— Taylor Allen (@TaylorAllen31) July 18, 2017
What might be most unnerving is not that LZ Granderson thought the Predators were once the Atlanta Thrashers, but that no one else on the panel (Beadle, Jacoby, and Wiley) corrected him on what is a pretty obvious mistake even for non-hockey fans to make.
Herein lies the dilemma of the ESPN-hockey coverage debate. On one hand, ESPN covering the sport more is good for the sport. On the other, if this is how they cover the sport outside of Buccigross, Cohn, Levy, and Melrose… maybe we should be thankful they barely cover the sport at all.