By Brad Lee
To: NBC dumbass programming people
From: St. Louis hockey fans
Re: Your lame ass decision Sunday
Your network had one of the premiere matchups in the NHL Sunday afternoon with the Pittsburgh Penguins playing the Washington Capitals on "national" TV. There were advertisements about the game on your network and NHL.com. There was some legit hype gathering about this game, well as much hype as a league that has less than 500,000 people credited with watching its All-Star game last month. But with these types of programming decisions, it's no wonder people don't watch your product. You see, St. Louis got shut out of this "national" game and was instead treated to the Chicago Blackhawks at New York Rangers. Why?
I know you people think Missouri and Illinois are flyover country, and that's fine for people with a bi-coastal schedule (probably matching your possibly bi lifestyle -- not that there's anything wrong with that). While the two states border each other, St. Louis and Chicago are pretty far apart, geographically (300 miles) and with tastes in sports. Ask anyone who roots for a competitive baseball team like the Cardinals and the lifelong losers who willingly subject themselves to the perpetually dreadful Chicago Cubs. St. Louisians simply don't understand, we must be totally different. Also, if you wear a Chicago Bears fleece to even a St. Louis Blues hockey game you're bound to get five to 10 smartass comments directed your way. So it makes absolutley no sense to force us to watch a shitty Central Division team that we're already sick of because the NHL forces our team to play them eight Goddamn times a year and only allows Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin to travel to St. Louis once every three years.
Please refer to the above map and realize that St. Louis, down in the lower left hand corner across the river from East St. Louis, is not in fact a Chicagoland suburb. Oh, and go fuck yourselves.
Yours in continuing to screw up a garage league,
Brad Lee