Wild Sign Mason Shaw For Remainder Of Season

Welcome back, Shawzy!

I recall that they kept his locker with his name on it, so if his recovery went well, I thought they would bring him in again this year. Looking forward to seeing him get back on the ice with Dewar and rediscover that chemistry they had.

Really hoping Shaw can stay healthy. Just want him to get through the season and be injury free. For him and team morale, nobody wants to see him blow knees again that's for sure. 

I'm glad to see Shawzy back. I would have thought it would take longer to get the legs going, but, hey, ACL rehab, it's like riding a bike!

For those interested, it looks like we'll have $4.5m cap space left at the deadline. We currently have 48/50 signed players. That leaves us room to acquire 2 more. If we sign our jrs. guys, that likely affects us next season, not this one. To play in the A, they'll get a PTO.

Beckman has been sent back down....again.....without playing a single shift. On the prospect front, Ohgren has increased 3 points, 2 goals. 

With the recent winning, we are back in the thick of the middling group. Now what? I certainly hope we can sell at the deadline, but the playoffs are once again in reach. 

Indeed. NSH, CGY, COL, lost. LA, STL, SEA, won.

The Wild sit one point back from Seattle and Nashville with a game in hand. 

Recently the Twins signed up for one more year with Diamond Sports Group, or Bally Sports North. Getting information from SI:

Quote

As things stand, Bally Sports North has a deal to broadcast Minnesota Wild, Timberwolves and Lynx games through the end of the 2023/24 seasons for those with streaming TV and cable packages.

I wasn't aware that this is possibly the last season that BSN could cover the Wild. It would be interesting if the Wild and Timberwolves went in different tv directions. 

What are you guys hearing up in the market? Is someone else like Comcast trying to enter the market? We know Amazon bought in and saved DSG at least temporarily. Could Amazon be wanting the channel beyond a streaming service? 

I'm still wondering how DSG could take such a cash cow as local/regional sports networks and run it into the ground. It seems to me that they sort of deserve to have someone else come in and take over. I'd like to see a little turnover here as I think their broadcasts have gotten pretty stale. 

Shaw is a sparkplug, I'll never forget him ragdolling a bigger guy that went after Rossi

Woohoo, Let's Go Shaw.

6 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

Recently the Twins signed up for one more year with Diamond Sports Group, or Bally Sports North. Getting information from SI:

I wasn't aware that this is possibly the last season that BSN could cover the Wild. It would be interesting if the Wild and Timberwolves went in different tv directions. 

What are you guys hearing up in the market? Is someone else like Comcast trying to enter the market? We know Amazon bought in and saved DSG at least temporarily. Could Amazon be wanting the channel beyond a streaming service? 

I'm still wondering how DSG could take such a cash cow as local/regional sports networks and run it into the ground. It seems to me that they sort of deserve to have someone else come in and take over. I'd like to see a little turnover here as I think their broadcasts have gotten pretty stale. 

Most of the BSN chatter has been about the Twins. MLB is saying they will be able to live stream any and all of the MLB games for both leagues so i think that is the way it will go next year. The twins took a bad deal instead of what looks like a worse deal for this year. No one knows if DSG/BSN will survive for next years Wild/Wolves season. As far as DSG running it all into the ground it starts with the gargantuan price they paid Disney for the RSN's. It was way too heavy a debt load to function. The RSN's or at least some of them have claimed that DSG has force drawn too much cash from them to pay down that debt and stay in business. This has put the individual RSN's in financial distress also. There will be a lot of drama yet to come.

15 hours ago, Up North Guy said:

As far as DSG running it all into the ground it starts with the gargantuan price they paid Disney for the RSN's. It was way too heavy a debt load to function. The RSN's or at least some of them have claimed that DSG has force drawn too much cash from them to pay down that debt and stay in business. This has put the individual RSN's in financial distress also. There will be a lot of drama yet to come.

What's odd about this is that they bought the RSN's on discount from Disney. I wonder if they were siphoning cash out of the RSN's to pay for other ventures that were not profitable for them? 

And, a quick look at research reveals that Diamond sued parent company Sinclair for $1.5B because they did just that. Sinclair thought that Diamond would run itself into the ground eventually, so they siphoned off as much cash as they could. They used it to pay for what they had acquired, and took whatever Diamond got to sell the rights to Bally the lawsuit claims. Apparently, they settled for about 1/3rd of the lawsuit and I'm sure the lawyers will be the winners in this deal. 

Diamond will then be split off from Sinclair and be on its own. According to the article I read, it appears that RSNs are in trouble everywhere and teams are looking to get back into the "on air" channels that consumers can get for free, or streaming. The Scripps channel in Las Vegas is said to be a prototype for what most teams, especially MLB, will try to do. Interestingly, it appears that the teams will be the owners of the channel. I don't know if this will work in all markets, but that's where the article's author thought they were going. 

I like the idea of a local, free, over the air channel carrying the games. I also like the idea of what ESPN did with NHL streaming, allowing out of market fans to get those games. It seems like there is a lot of ad revenue that teams can get all by themselves without a middle man like an RSN giving them rights money and broadcasting. I would also think that a set up like this will make the broadcasts much more localized and unique, unlike the uniformity we see with the RSNs, specifically the Bally brand where it's essentially the same format through all markets. This has the potential to be a really good deal for the fans as they don't have to invest a lot of money into becoming a fan and can spend it on other fan related things. After all, capturing the fans loyalty for the long haul should be the team's goal, and the best money making plan they've got.