Good points for me it was like watching the final season for True Blood meets the season premiere of The Walking Dead... Where instead of getting to something they dragged things out like 30 minutes which lost about 5M viewers for TWD. Its like just throwing all the names/trades at once, then mixing in some awards or other skits didn't work for me. I watched Burns get his award, then they seemed to go into some promotion that wasn't interested in so went to sleep
. I watched a version where just showed the 30 minutes draft cut away from the Awards which I liked more. My favorite part is when he reads a name out of order so then they had to go back to team. Announcing the trades over the days would have been better giving them more attention. Its like TWD where knew somebody or two were going to die to the baseball bat only to have it not shown doing flashbacks. In a way that draft was flashing back since it was already done trades/picks. So didn't feel the satisfaction or element of it being live that a real draft would have. Even when it happened it was like I felt cheated or just not satisfied. There was a 10 minute hater's guide version that I really liked that saw on-line, before the awards show the channel had an hour of hockey related programming or shows. So that time could have been used to do the draft or have the draft start the awards show then do who won what. That way can sorta talk about players taken or use them to announce or promote the awards...
To me its like the NHL tries to alienate its real fans while not gaining any new ones. Like they start out with the Penguins almost like a wrestling show as the heel... Like Crosby is John Cena or something where often really love or hate the guy much like Hulk Hogan. For the most part there are fans of 30 other teams who didn't want to see all the Penguin stuff or rubbing it in with the Catfish under glass
. I'm glad Burns won the Norris, not sure it was wise to do the big Fleury pick last basically since did reverse order picking. Think they call that to bury the lead, many of the picks were already leaked too. Not many surprises or players taken that didn't already know from reading reports or so. Hard to process all the trades/picks doing it all clumped up or mixed in with the awards though. I did like seeing the GM of Predators face when they took Neal, he seemed a bit irked by that which was great
. Vegas GM took too many left shot D-men while leaving some real good players out there for picks or other players, think should have tried to win early to keep the fan base there energized and interested.