Daily Faceoff Live: The airing of NHL-themed Festivus grievances

Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna discussed their Festivus grievances for the current-day National Hockey League on Friday’s “2022 Year in Review” episode of Daily Faceoff Live.

The two co-hosts took up the mantle established by Jerry Stiller on a classic episode of Seinfeld nearly three decades ago, celebrating the made-up holiday established as an alternative to consumerist Christmas.

Festivus typically includes the “airing of grievances” — or, as Stiller’s character said, “I got a lotta problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!”

Here’s what Seravalli and McKenna picked as their problems with the NHL.

Mike McKenna: I think that the NHL misses the boat when it comes to the NHL Network not having any distribution, really. If you don’t have the top-tier cable package in your city, you don’t have much hope of getting NHL Network. Streaming? It’s not on YouTube TV, there’s no standalone streaming app. I look at the NFL Network, 57 million homes. MLB Network, 48 million homes. NBA, 43 million. I couldn’t even find the NHL’s distribution because it’s not anywhere near those.

Frank Seravalli: My grievance to air is pretty simple: it involves the NHL’s salary cap. Mike, it’s petty, because it’s all about me as a “NHL insider” in that, this was the most quiet December that you could ever think of. We’ve had basically four trades of significance to this point in the season, if you even want to call it that. Outside of the deal for Nils Lundkvist, right before the regular season started, to Dallas from the Rangers for a first- and fourth-round pick, everything else has kind of been moving of the deck chairs. Nothing to gnaw on in terms of transactions, no real conversation. The phones aren’t buzzing. No one has cap space.

Check out the full episode here: