OPENING THE OPEN HOCKEY E-MAILSACK

It's time to open the Open Hockey E-Mailsack, because I said so, and because everyone wants to know what's in my large sack! Someone asked a question that was sure to rile me up, because it's about the local playoff hockey HD broadcast schedule!

Q: "Rangers are on Vs (Wednesday night), does that mean there is no HiDef ?" - Rob V. from Rockland County, NY

A: Ugh, I wish you hadn't brought this up.

Short answer: Yep. But it's worse than just Game 1 (see the official NYR press release). Unless you're one of the lucky few Comcast customers that has VersusHD, you're screwed for ALL 7 POSSIBLE GAMES, except the 2 NBC weekend games. So even though us Cablevision subscribers got about 60 Rangers games in HD during the season, for the 2nd round of the playoffs we'll get a MAXIMUM of 2 . Oh, and here's the kick in the ass: games 5 and 7 (if necessary) will be on MSG . . . in SD! And because of blackout rules, out-of-market viewers will be able to see these in HD on Versus! Brilliant.

As for the Devils, I've heard that the home games are on FSNY-HD (thank god). But NBC completely avoids that series, which is also probably a good thing. For both teams the away games (in Buffalo and Ottawa) will not be in HD. (As of 5 PM today, I have no idea if it's actually on in HD, since it's not scheduled.)

No, really Mr. Bettman, attendance is up 0.1%, you're doing a bang-up job, don't listen to what anyone's saying! And Mr. Dolan, just stay the course, because according to your bank account everything's fine!

It might be time to move to Canada (I believe that CBC HD and TSN HD carry all the games, except for those @Anaheim).