I, like thousands of Sharks fans out there, do not live within the official Sharks territory. Sure, I consider my dorm room in LA to be an unofficial outpost of Sharks Territory (and I have a sign that affirms that), but that doesn’t mean the local cable/satellite provider recognizes that. And so in order to watch the games, I have to turn to other methods of watching games.

As I live in a dorm, I can’t subscribe to Center Ice, and I’m hesitant about using torrents through the university’s internet connection. Well, I’m just hestitant about using torrents in general, but that’s just me. So I’m left with two options: quasi-legal internet streams and NHL Gamecenter. Not wanting to rely on third party streamers that could get shut down at any time (like they did mid-way through last season), I decided to invest in a season of NHL Gamecenter.

In the following table, I’ve broken down the games in terms of which broadcast feed Gamecenter uses. Yellow (or goldenrod, if you prefer) represents the Sharks broadcast. Gray is Versus. White represents the other teams’.

*Denotes that it was the only feed of the game

Obviously, there is a bit of discrepency. Through 20 games this season, the other team has gotten 13 broadcasts, the Sharks have 5, and Versus has the last 2.

In general, the NHL likes to use the feed of the away team, likely because fewer of those fans would be at the game and therefore not watching the broadcast on Gamecenter and such. That is certainly supported by the fact that the Sharks feed has not been picked up for one Sharks home game this year.

But the Sharks also have a lot more road games than home games – 12 road as opposed to 8 home – and so it would be logical that they’ve had more feeds on Gamecenter picked up. No dice.

The Sharks have played 60% of their games on the road thus far, yet they only have 25% of the Gamecenter feeds. Even if you take out the Versus broadcasts – which fans of both teams have to suffer through and aren’t availabe on Gamecenter – the Sharks still only represent 28% of the feeds. That’s a 32% discrepency.

Now, I’m a fan of Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda. I understand some other viewers, especially those who are fans of the opposing team, might not enjoy their occasional banter and in-jokes, but isn’t that the same with all regional announcers? I mean, there are a few that I don’t mind listening to – the Stars announcers, for one – but there are quite a few who I just find so annoying. And I don’t want to have to listen to them night after night, extolling the virtues of their own team while calling players on the Sharks “Vuhlasic,” “Veesee,” “Nuh-back-of,” and “Mar-LOW.” Or constantly mistaking Staubitz for McGinn. That kind of gets on my nerves after a while.

Anyways, back to Gamecenter. I’ll continue to keep track of which feed they choose to use throughout the season, giving periodic updates (notably at the half-way point). Hopefully, the disparity in which feed will even out by the end of the season.