Sportsnet (through the CBC) has turned itself into The Leafs Network and Hockey Night in Canada has been dragged along, like it or not

These are sad days for those among us who recall the great Danny Gallivan and his Savardian spinorama — days when Hockey Night in Canada has become little more than a public-relations outlet for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It has been going on for a couple of decades now, so this isn’t really new — but for all practical purposes, Sportsnet (through the CBC) has turned itself into The Leafs Network and Hockey Night in Canada has been dragged along, like it or not.

Our thanks to reader Paul Wilkinson of Dorval, who pointed out the Canadiens will be featured on CBC only six times all season — including the four games the Habs play against the Leafs. CBC will also show one game featuring the Habs against the Florida Panthers and one versus the Ottawa Senators.

Photo by Stan Behal / Postmedia News

“No other Canadian teams will be featured by HNIC (on CBC) vs. Montreal,” Wilkinson points out, “not even when the Habs are in Edmonton for a Dec. 21, 7 p.m., Saturday game with (Connor) McDavid and the Oilers. Canada’s ‘national’ broadcaster will carry the Leafs vs. Detroit instead. Our tax dollars at work, and it leaves a very bad taste.”

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In other words, HNIC finds the Canadiens and the Oilers (two Canadian teams that have won a combined 15 Stanley Cups since Toronto held its last parade) less compelling than the Leafs playing a U.S. team in rebuild mode.

What it boils down to is except on those evenings when they’re playing the Leafs, the Canadiens are available nationally on Saturday nights only through second-string Citytv. And this is not simply a Montreal complaint: HNIC treats the Ottawa Senators, Winnipeg Jets, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks with similar disdain, as though Canada was home to one major-league hockey team and six minor-league organizations.

The Maple Leafs are stuffed down our throats 24/7 by the national media, including TSN. Even the print media are not entirely blameless: see last fall’s mind-bending headline: “Is Morgan Rielly greater than Orr?”

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This Leafs-centric system has distorted the entire system of broadcasting and coverage of NHL hockey in Canada. The long-term effects, I would argue, seriously undermine the NHL’s image in this country — as though NBC were to treat the New York Rangers as the only team in the U.S. and their opponents as a bunch of interchangeable generic teams.

Worse, the trend is unlikely to be reversed for at least another seven years, until this abysmal contract with Rogers has run its course. The result can be downright ugly.

We got a nasty glimpse of just how far HNIC will go to pump the tires of the Leafs stars during Toronto’s season opener against the Ottawa Senators, when veteran play-by-play man Jim Hughson offered a jaw-dropping commentary exonerating Auston Matthews of any wrongdoing in the harassment of a female Arizona security guard.

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After Matthews scored, Hughson referred to the “alleged indiscretion” Matthews and his buddies committed in July.

“When I thought about that,” Hughson went on, “I looked back to 2012 and thought about how Patrick Kane, a 24-year-old for the Chicago Blackhawks, got into a little trouble with too many cameras around in Wisconsin that summer, and what did he do? He came back and was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner and won the Stanley Cup (in 2013.)

“And that’s how you put a little problem behind you.”

Before that stunning bit of foolery escaped his mouth, the worst I thought of Hughson was he’s colourless and a little dull. With that one comment, Hughson veered dangerously into Don Cherry territory, waxing offensive on our national, taxpayer-funded network.

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For openers, there is noconnection between the charge filed against Matthews in Arizona and his play on the ice. None. Scoring a goal doesn’t absolve him any more than a 10-game scoring drought means he is guilty.

As with Kane and hundreds of other athletes caught behaving badly, there is no link to their play. It doesn’t matter if Matthews scores 50 goals in October or none: what happened in Arizona is an entirely separate matter. It doesn’t take a subtle legal mind to figure that out.

The deeper issue here, of course, is our English-language sports networks and their relationship to the Leafs. Did Hughson simply gap out and say something he shouldn’t have said, or is it part and parcel of a corporate policy that means flogging the Maple Leafs 24/7, at the expense of common sense?

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You get the feeling Hughson got the message from corporate HQ during the off-season, when Doug MacLean and Nick Kypreos (who occasionally dared to express independent opinions that didn’t sufficiently exalt the almighty Leafs) were let go by Sportsnet

In their lust for that all-important southern Ontario demographic, Sportsnet, TSN and the CBC risk offending hockey fans in six other pretty significant markets. If the only road to that coveted 7 p.m. Saturday night CBC slot with Hockey Night in Canada is through Toronto, an inevitable side effect is the Leafs will become the most hated team in the country.

Check that. Thanks to our national media, they already are.