3 tweaks ESPN should make to perfect its NHL broadcasts

ESPN, please give us a permanent shot counter.

We’re only a handful of days into ESPN’s tenure of the NHL’s media broadcast rights, and so far so good! NHL Opening Night has already broken hockey ratings records for ESPN, and it’s only going to grow from here.

Plus, with Turner Sports — who have already been more entertaining than NBC ever was and have also gotten Charles Barkley in on the fun — along for the ride as well, it seems hockey is in really good hands.

However, there have been a few small quibbles hockey fans have had with the limited ESPN broadcasts we’ve seen thus far. Already, ESPN has fixed one such problem by giving the Vegas Golden Knights back their VGK abbreviation on the scorebug instead of the very strange VGS they went with on night one.

If ESPN is listening to hockey fans’ critiques with its NHL broadcasts, I think it’s only fair that we list out a few of our own we’d like to see changed. ESPN already has a great thing going here with hockey, so why not push it even closer to perfection with these handful of small tweaks?