This past year, ESPN chose not to renew their TV contract with the NHL. This summer, the NHL struck a deal with the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) to broadcast the NHL's nationally televised games. Leading up to the season, there was all kinds of hype about how excited the OLN and NHL were about the new deal, how the OLN would give the sport of hockey much more respect than ESPN did, and how the OLN would be a part of the rebirth and revival of the NHL.

Unfortunately, I think that the opposite is going to happen. While there's no doubt that OLN brings more excitement and attention to their NHL games than ESPN, the quality of the programming is very, very poor. In my opinion, they're scaring viewers away (like myself) and preventing the growth of the popularity of the sport.

I've watched a couple games on OLN (Pens vs. Sabres and Coyotes vs. Stars) and couldn't watch much more than half a period of the games.

First, the image quality of the broadcast is poor. It's nowhere near as sharp as when ESPN broadcast the games. As a result, the puck and players are more difficult to see. I don't know anything about what it technically takes to broadcast a nationally televised game, but it's a fact that the image quality is less than it used to be.

Second, OLN needs new camera operators. Last night's Coyotes/Stars game was absolutely unbearable to watch. The camera operator zoomed in and out of the action very often, resulting in not being able to see what was happening on the rest of the ice. And when the operator moved the camera to follow the puck, it was like he/she only knew how to whip it around at full speed and not pan it smoothly. Word of advice to OLN: giving your viewers vertigo is not a good thing. Just keep the camera zoomed out and pan back and forth from one end of the rink to the other, please.

Last, the score and game time overlay on the screen looks hideous. Its colors and styling make it look like it's something out of the 70's. And it's positioned so that it's an inch or two above the bottom of the screen and gets in the way of the game.

Overall, the quality of OLN's NHL hockey presentations is terrible. It's like they've never broadcast a sports game before, which may be the case I guess. But if viewers out there are like me, they're going to stop watching until it gets better. I hope the NHL figures this out. I think they were expecting a revival of TV ratings with OLN, and it's going to backfire.