Don’t adjust your settings. It’s not your fault. And you weren’t alone.

The NHL and MLB Advanced Media re-launched the League’s digital properties this week, with a new look for NHL.com, a refreshed NHL app and, perhaps most importantly, the transformation of GameCenter Live into NHL.TV as the official streaming service.

The hype for that last item was palpable: BAM is considered the best in the business when it comes to streaming. It has built its reputation on streaming baseball games with minimal glitches and impressive images.

The NHL returned to the ice after the All-Star Game with 12 games on Tuesday night. The glitches were many. The images were not always impressive. When, you know, you could actually see images.

“I don’t want to trivialize it: There’s nothing worse than a fan who wants to watch a live game and can’t,” said Bob Bowman, president of BAM. “You hate to have the fans be frustrated. But it’s from those kinds of events you get better.”

The fans were very frustrated on Tuesday night.

Some of it was the expected stubborn reaction to a new product, the “things aren’t they way I like them” lament. This is something that eventually sorts itself out, as users adapt and the product changes and everything meets in the middle.

More problematic was that for thousands of fans who stream games on laptops, gaming platforms and mobile devices, NHL.tv simple didn’t work, to an embarrassing degree.

Here’s a sample of over 70 emails Puck Daddy received last night. (We’d also recommend reading Jason Gurwin’s “10 things NHL.tv got wrong” piece, which gets into some interesting details.)

***

First, I had issues logging in. I clicked on the game, found the little TV icon in the space-age floating weirdness that is the NHL's idea of a website, and clicked it. I was faced with the spinning wheel of doom for a minute. Two minutes. Three. I refreshed; nothing. Nothing. Nothing. (I checked to make sure: YouTube worked fine. Netflix? Fine. Flash? Still working. NHL.tv? WHO KNOWS.) Finally, after restarting my browser, switching browsers, restarting my computer, and going back to the original browser, I was able to get to the login screen.

Hallelujah, I thought! Finally. It's working.

If only.

The only game that would work for me was the Leafs-Bruins game. This was billed as the "Free Game of the Week" or some such, which is great, except that I'm a paying customer and should therefore be able to watch the not-free games, too. No dice. Spinning wheel of doom.

At this point, I give up for a bit. The Habs are going to lose; I don't need to have my hopes and dreams crushed in real time technicolor. I'm still hopeful, at this point, that things will magically work by the time the Oilers game starts. Surely NHL.tv wouldn't deprive me of McDavid's return, right?

Well, I got my wish. Sort of. The game loaded, but it was incredibly laggy; even with the stream quality switched all the way to low, it stopped and started and did a thing where it fast-forward played, like, ten seconds at a time. I made it to about five minutes left in the first period before it froze up completely. I tried waiting it out; I tried switching to the CBJ stream. I tried refreshing the page.

Spinning circle of doom.

- Ki Hunt

***

The stream started to skip. It replayed the same 15 second sequence, with Drew Remenda making some quip about Connor McDavid’s average shift length, about 6 times in a row. Naturally, I was getting pretty frustrated by this. It seemed to clear itself up, but from here on out, it became unwatchable. It would freeze every 20-30 seconds, the feed would become grainy and blurry upon unfreezing, and repeat. I closed the browser and re-opened the feed, only to get a frozen still of gameplay for 5 minutes.

At this point, I got up to make dinner since attempting to watch it was so frustrating.

Eventually, the stream came back to life, and I returned to attempt to watch the last 2 minutes of the period. Instead, I got to see the sequence from 1:50 to 1:15 replay, and this it not an exaggeration, for 10 minutes.

That’s right, the same 45 second clip looped for 10 minutes.

Here we are, in 2016, facing the same issues that I sent countless e-mails about in 2011. It’s the same old song. If the NHL cannot figure out a way to resolve this immediately, I am going to begin the process of using everything in my power to get a refund for this package. I am the core demographic for this product, and through its incompetency, the NHL has alienated me. I just wanted to watch my favourite terrible team in peace (and high definition).

Story continues