Morning Skate: Under way

It is Wednesday, my dudes.

And it isn’t just any Wednesday — the NHL season has officially begun!

Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh kicked things off last night with a game in Tampa, with that game followed by the inaugural Seattle Kraken game (against the second-newest franchise, the Vegas Golden Knights).

One notable thing about the Lightning-Penguins game from last night: I don’t know if it was due to ESPN’s audio or what, but the entire game sounded like it was being played in a museum.

There were occasional murmurs and chants, of course, but large stretches of the game were filled with silence (sporting-event level silence, that is).

It was even bad during the Lightning’s intros, with the majority of the players barely getting a cursory round of applause.

Maybe it was bad audio, maybe it was that Tampa fans are bored of winning, or maybe the fans are just lame.

I guess time will tell when we see what the other broadcasts sound like.

You kind of can’t blame Tampa fans for a “we’ve seen this before” reaction when...well, they just saw it a year ago.

Today’s discussion topic

If you watched any of the games last night, what’s your take on ESPN’s return to hockey broadcasting?

Are you feeling better or worse about it after watching a couple of games?