Picture from a Panthers-Capitals game in November of 2021 that was televised on ESPN+ and Hulu
In 2021, when ESPN regained the television rights for the NHL, there were lots of differences made to their broadcasts when compared to how they broadcasted the sport previously. One of them was the short-lived, but memorable, “The Rush” segment.
“The Rush” was a segment that is extremely similar to NASCAR on FOX’s “Crank It Up” segment. During the segment, the ESPN announcers would mute their microphones and have you embrace yourself in the sounds of the game. In total, this would last for about two to three minutes, then the announcers would come back on.
Throughout social media, the opinions on the segment seemed to be mostly favorable with some people even calling for an alternate cast of “The Rush” that would last throughout the entire game. Ultimately, these opinions would not come to fruition because “The Rush” would stop being used by ESPN’s telecasts after just a little more than a month into the 2021-2022 NHL season.
The overall opinion towards this segment was favorable, and most fans were praising ESPN for coming up with this, so where did it go wrong for ESPN to cancel the segment? Well, the main fear would have been that the announcers would miss out on a goal call. Luckily, this never occurred when ESPN used the segment, but it is an obvious problem that would ultimately cancel the segment.
In addition, while “The Rush” is a good idea in concept, the NHL isn’t like NASCAR. A broadcast cannot just stop having commentary when a goal is destined to happen at any time. In NASCAR, the “Crank It Up” segment is so beloved because the sound of the cars is one of the most sacred things in that sport, and there isn’t no race winner that can occur at any point, it is always at the end!
My closing thoughts on “The Rush” would be this. In thought, it is an absolutely brilliant idea to have a segment that lets fans hear the sounds of the ice, but I would not suggest having it a part of the main broadcast. In order to use this in the future, I would provide the idea of having a “The Rush” alternate cast that is available through ESPN+ or another ESPN-owned channel. ESPN has anything but shy when it comes to alternate presentations for the NHL. Just last year they had a fully animated broadcast that aired on the Disney Channel networks!
Hopefully, one day we see “The Rush” return in some form for ESPN. For next week’s discontinued ESPN segment, we will be looking into the “SkyCam” angle that was used for the earlier parts of the 2021-2022 NHL season. I hope you all enjoyed today’s piece. Have a great Sunday everyone!