Watchdog

Sean Avery of the Rangers enjoyed his internship at Vogue. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here is his account of it.

The Sports Business Journal reported this morning that the NHL is taking legal action against the Rangers that could result in an attempt to take ownership of the franchise away from MSG.

No, really. Or so it says here:

"The NHL has proposed disciplinary proceedings against MSG that could result in the suspension or termination of their ownership of the NHL Rangers, according to a draft letter written by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman that was filed in New York district court late yesterday. The letter, part of the league's ongoing legal fight against MSG, alleges that MSG – by suing the NHL – has violated the league constitution."

Yikes! Very interesting. But I'm guessing there will be many months or years of legal rigmarole before the NHL actually repossesses Henrik Lundqvist, packs up the uniforms and moves the team to Des Moines.

Sean Avery tells People he would like to be an intern at Vogue again next offseason.

I'm thinking of applying for it myself, actually. I'm qualified.

I am totally on the same wavelength with Avery on what he said about his swimsuit strategy for this July and August:

"I'm bringing the European flavor back to America, and I'm rocking a straight Speedo all summer."

My wife and daughter got into a bit of a tiff Sunday regarding the former picking up the latter early from a party to prevent her from lacking sleep and worsening a cold.

Which naturally reminded me of Jan. 5, 1972, when my mother would not allow me to attend a Rangers-Blues game because I was recuperating from a cold and she felt a cold hockey arena might be bad for me.

The Rangers won, 9-1. Jean Ratelle had a hat trick and two assists.

Still haven't forgiven her, may she rest in peace.

Some belated ratings stuff from the Rangers-Pens series last week:

Game 4 was Versus' highest-rated and most-viewed NHL telecast ever, drawing 1.1 percent of homes that have the network and 1.2 million viewers.

In New York, the game attracted 2.1 percent of homes, the highest-rated NHL game Versus has shown here. The network also was the top-rated cable channel in the New York market for that time period.

Honestly, I did not have time to look into how this works or to find out if it's legal.

But I do know that people I know who do not get Versus watched Game 1 of Rangers-Penguins by going to this Web site.

So I guess you should check it out tonight if you are among the 16 percent or so of Cablevision customers that do not have digital channels.

Just don't say I sent you.

The schedule is out for the Rangers-Pens series. No surprise: NBC is grabbing two of the games for Sunday afternoon showing. Two others are Versus exclusives. The others will be on MSG.

I will explain further how all this works in the newspaper this week.

Here is the schedule:
Game 1: Friday, 7 p.m., Versus
Game 2: Sunday, 2 p.m., NBC
Game 3: April 29, 7 p.m., MSG (Versus in the rest of the country)
Game 4: May 1, 7 p.m., Versus
Game 5: May 4, 2 p.m., NBC
Game 6: May 5, 7 p.m., MSG (Versus in the rest of the country)
Game 7: May 7, TBD

(Bonus WatchDog kudos to first reader to identify the guy in the picture.)

Hockey fever is sweeping the nation!

NBC's overnight ratings for the second weekend of the playoffs were 1.2 and 1.3 percent of homes in 56 major markets, up from 0.9 and 1.1 last season for comparable slots.

OK, so it's not exactly fever yet. But the network - which is very close to signing a new contract with the NHL, by the way - is salivating over some potential second-around matchups involving Original Six and/or major market and/or Sidney Crosby franchises.

The Rangers being involved helps, obviously.

Speaking of the Blueshirts, during my time monitoring SNY's late afternoon shows for my newspaper column, I watched with horror as "Daily News Live" host Chris Cotter listed the top all-time returns of former New York athletes and did not include Ed Giacomin.

Joe Benigno thankfully chimed in and added him to the list. (That's not Eddie in the picture. Bonus kudos to first reader to identify him.)

Joe had a good line on the show last week. Cotter name Leonardo da Vinci as "the greatest Italian of all time."

Said Benigno: "No, Frank Sinatra."

An excellent way to rile up both Rangers and Islanders fans on a Sunday morning is to quote Mike Milbury in a column.

Here it is.

I couldn't fit all my Mad Mike stuff. Like the fact that in January, the Rangers and Jaromir Jagr declined to make old No. 68 available for an interview with an NBC crew that didn't even include Milbury - apparent payback for Mike's Jagr-bashing.

NBC introduced Milbury to many casual fans Jan. 1 by dredging up the 1979 Madison Square Garden shoe incident. Bob Costas asked him about it, and Mike said the Rangers fan in question "deserved it." He also said if he tried that in this more sensitive era, he might have been suspended for life.

Here's something Sean Avery can scare Brodeur with, now that waving a stick in his face is a no-no.

Am I up to 20 posts yet? Enough already. Enjoy the AWA Wrestling Championship on ESPN Classic at 1 a.m. I have no clue what that is.

Sunday's Devils-Rangers game attracted for MSG 2.61 percent of homes in the New York area, the best rating since the lockout.

On MSG Plus, the Devils version of the game got another 0.63 percent of homes.

So the total for the game was 3.24 percent, or 239,760 households.

Hockeytown! Sort of.

Friday night was the 33rd anniversary of what remains one of the five best hockey games I've ever seen on TV - Game 3 of the Islanders-Rangers first-round 1975 playoff series, which marked the first major step in the Isles' eventual rise to greatness.

As a journalist, I was hoping Zach Parise of the Devils would beat the Rangers in overtime, just for the cosmic symmetry and a great story.

Didn't happen. That's OK. I was a huge Rangers fan on April 11, 1975, so maybe it's just as well history did not repeat itself.

I made my first trip to The Rock in Newark Friday night since the week before it opened.

Holy Wang, what it building! All of Long Island should demand that as much private and public money as necessary be squandered to get one of those in Nassau County ASAP.

Why should New Jerseyans be the only ones with a modern sports palace full of fancy bars (one of which is made of ice), leggy barmaids and easy train access?

The arena workers were extraordinarily friendly, too, including the woman who upon seeing me barely able to stand up between periods offered to walk on my aching back. Seriously.

I was seated near James Dolan, who watched intently but impassively all night. The only thing that betrayed possible nervousness was his severe working-over of a piece of gum.

Jerry Springer and Peter King were there, too, but they were not sitting with Mr. Dolan.

Rod Gilbert and Adam Graves are scheduled to appear on Ch. 5's "Good Day New York" Friday morning to talk about the playoffs.

Why am I mentioning this? I have no idea. When am I going to start telling these friendly p.r. people who reach out to me to just buy an ad?

Why don't I tell Ch. 5 that I'll plug their hockey segment if they plug my Friday newspaper column about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry?

Why don't I stand up for myself and the dignity (and profits) of the newspaper industry? I'm going to start doing just that after this post.

But right now I have to concentrate on not gagging listening to Mike Tirico wax poetic about the Masters and its tradition and blah, blah, blah.

Stop it, now! I'm never going to make it to Sunday at 7 p.m.

Someone find Chris Berman and give him a mike!

(UPDATE: What I did not know when I made fun of Ch. 5 here is that it turns out Gilbert and Graves were appearing on behalf of the "Garden of Dreams Foundation" and thus for a good cause for which I am happy to provide free publicity.)

A very Happy (69th) Birthday to Sal (Red Light) Messina, the long-time Rangers analyst (and former Long Island Ducks goaltender), now retired and living in Fla.

In 2005, Sal was honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame along with former Newsday hockey scribe Helene Elliott.

I never worked with Sal. But I did several playoff games with Helene and filled in for her during the 1988 Olympics, including the day Brian Leetch first showed up in Rye for Rangers practice.

But I digress.

I've been intentionally avoiding the ongoing legal saga between MSG and the NHL because ongoing legal sagas are a drag.

Fortunately Sports Business Journal still is paying attention.

To the surprise of no one in North America, NBC and the NHL chose the Rangers-Penguins game March 30 as part of their flexible schedule for Sunday afternoon games.

This will be the Rangers' fourth and final regular-season NBC appearance this season, because four is the limit.

NBC still has not decided whether to re-up with the NHL for next season. Or at least it hasn't shared the decision with me.

The huge ratings gains the Rangers have made on MSG this season have echoed on Versus.

Monday night's game attracted 1.4 percent of homes in the New York area, the highest ever for a game on Versus that did not involve two New York-area teams. (A game against the Isles in October did a 1.8 rating).

Meanwhile, on MSG Plus - formerly known as FSNY - Monday night's Sampras-Federer match drew 1.1 percent of the audience, the highest non-hockey rating on that station since 2006.

Also on Monday nights: "The New Adventures of Old Christine" on CBS. It's a good show. You should check it out. The wife and I TiVo it every week to watch when we're not busy with hockey and tennis.

Here is my newspaper story about the Rangers jacking up ticket prices for the playoffs.

My take on this: Teams can charge whatever they want during the regular season. If you don't want to pay the price, don't. It's America, capitalism, etc.

But when you charge outrageously more during the playoffs than the seats cost in the regular season, you are pricing out the loyal fans who have filled those seats all winter at a (presumably) affordable price.

Whatever.

I have to go. Brett is crying. Erin Andrews probably is, too. I talked to her this morning. She is a Packers fan and said she was dreading Brett's retirement news conference.

I have to write a newspaper column now. About Erin, not Brett.

One more ratings post to bore you with before I call it a night:

Sunday's Rangers-Flyers tilt on NBC did out-rate the Yankees spring training game on YES - 2.4 percent of New York-area households to 2.3.

New York finished third in the ratings for the game among major markets, trailing only Philadelphia (duh!) and Buffalo.

(Sorry about the generic picture/logo. Tuesday morning Web guru Adam Abramson is going to talk me through our annoying new procedure for crediting photos to avoid legal troubles and such.)

NBC just announced that the Rangers-Flyers game March 2 has been chosen for the network's national game under the flex scheduling system.

This will be the Rangers' third NBC appearance of the season. The limit is four. One of the following games likely will be chosen eventually to max out the Blueshirts:

March 9: Boston at Rangers
March 30: Rangers at Pittsburgh
April 6: Rangers at New Jersey

I was impressed when I met my wife that she could name most of the roster of the 1973-74 Flyers.

Loyal WatchDog reader Kenny Albert wrote Saturday to confirm our report that he turned 40 Feb. 2.

He was en route to Montreal to call today's Rangers game, 40 years to the day since his father, Marv, returned home from a Rangers game in Montreal to discover Kenny had arrived - three months prematurely.

Cool.

Marv will call the Super Bowl for Westwood One, but in New York we'll get the regular crew headed by the always solid Bob Papa.

In the winter of 1988, I was filling in at Rangers practice in Rye one day for Helene Elliott, our beat writer, who was busy at the Calgary Olympics. I ended up with an important story when the U.S. team got bounced from the tournament and one of its promising players, Brian Leetch, showed up for his first pro practice.

I had a bad cold that day. And I was much younger than I am now. So was Leetch.

Here are some programming highlights MSG plans for "Brian Leetch Day/Night":

11 a.m.: Eastern Conference Finals, Game 7, May 27, 1994
1 p.m.: Stanley Cup Finals, Game 3, June 4, 1994
3 p.m. Stanley Cup Finals, Game 7, June 14, 1994
6 p.m.: "MSG Profiles: Ranger #2: Leetch"
6:30 p.m.: Brian Leetch Night Ceremony, hosted by Sam Rosen, plus many interviews
8 p.m.: Rangers vs. Thrashers
10:30 p.m. "MSG, NY"

OK, hockey people: Here's one that really, really needs to go up on Rangers message boards. Work with me.

Spies in the TV and/or hockey worlds tell me that Jaromir Jagr and/or the Rangers were so mad about recent comments from NBC analyst Mike Milbury about him that he did not sit for interviews with NBC producers sent out this week to gather interviews for Sunday's Bruins-Rangers tilt.

NBC got several other prominent Blueshirts on tape, but not Jagr.

Hey, Mad Mike promised to stir things up for the Peacocks. I guess he's off to a fast start.

NBC just announced that the first game in its new flex schedule will be Bruins-Rangers Jan. 20. (That matchup, at Yankee Stadium, was the network's first choice for the outdoor New Year's game before it ended up in suburban Buffalo.)

Naturally, the news prompted Bob Costas to discuss with Mike Milbury the time Milbury hit a fan with a shoe at the Garden.

Here is Joe Namath for Ovaltine.

This item on MSG's latest legal setback is a perfect one on which to close out the week and start a brief vacation.

It's a topic I've been ignoring in the newspaper and on the blog for fear of boring readers, but it is newsworthy, sort of, so I'm happy my friends at The Sports Business Journal wrote about it today so I don't have to. Here it is, by Eric Fisher and Tripp Mickle:

A U.S. District Court judge in N.Y. today denied MSG's request for a preliminary injunction that would have left operational control of the NHL Rangers' official Web site with the club instead of migrating to a common NHL platform. Ruling on arguments made during an October 23 hearing, Judge Loretta Preska wrote, "I find that the goal of building a League brand is a legitimate, procompetitive aim of the NHL and that the restriction imposed by the joint venture of not operating a rival Rangers site serves the procompetitive purposes of having League uniformity, facilitating fan navigation, attracting advertisers due to larger mass, reduction transaction costs in advertisement negotiations, and preventing individual teams from free-riding off of the League efforts."

MSG and the Rangers have argued that the NHL's attempt to create a common Internet platform, and fine the club $100,000 per day for non-compliance, constituted an antitrust violation. But Preska also said, "Because MSG has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits or a sufficiently serious question going to the merits, I do not reach the issues of whether the League's fine on the Rangers constitutes irreparable injury or whether the balance of hardships tips decidedly toward the team."

MSG officials pledged to appeal the ruling against the injunction and also vowed to proceed with its overall lawsuit against the NHL. "This decision is one step in what will be a very long legal process and we look forward to having the opportunity to present the facts, which support our position."