NATIONWIDE RAZOR?

Its happened, and you should see the size of my head.

Yes, I get to ply my trade on a national scale.

OLN (soon to be Versus) has included yours truly in their stable of announcers for the 2006-2007 season.

Its something we tried to make happen last season but the late consumation of a new CBA and the condensed schedule to accomidate the Winter Olympics made it near impossible to do both Stars games and OLN's fledgling package.

Fast forward a year and its doable, and I couildn't be more excited.

Included in my package (easy now) are four Stars games including opening night! Can't thank Mike Baker and OLN enough for that honor. I promised not to ruin it any more than I have on the local level in past.

Since securing the rights to the NHL, OLN has been beaten up for their obscurity, their hunting and cycling heritage, and at times their coverage. Sure some of it may have been warranted but most of it was just pot-shots. And as I wrote last season (10/13/05), the NHL on OLN was basically a start-up and if you compared the product at the beginning of the season to what they put on the air at the end of the playoffs you'd see the quantum improvement.

They added 7,000,000 subscribers (including me), settled their differences with Dish Network, and at seasons end were in over 70,000,000 homes.

They ran some excellent hockey programming around the games themselves.

And they treat the NHL as their prize possession...not an afterthought or a obligation.

My goal on Versus?...to not suck at describing stick and puck.