TSN TRADECENTRE: I’d like to make fun of it, but I can’t

Yesterday, someone asked me why I wasn’t doing a live TradeCentre blog. Well, other than the 8am start time, my only excuse is that TSN has made the yearly event almost impossible to ridicule.

How’d they do it? Easy. By making fun of it themselves.

TSN knows their coverage is ridiculous. Not only do they go on-air before most general managers are out of bed, they have three separate panels with 15 different in-studio personalities. For fun, let’s count them off: James Duthie’s on the main desk with Pierre McGuire, Darren Pang and Craig MacTavish. Directly behind Duthie is Dave Hodge with Steve Simmons, Damien Cox and Michael Farber. Gord Miller, Bob McKenzie and Darren Dreger, or as their otherwise known, “The Tradebreakers,” sit behind McGuire and Pang. Then Duthie slides over to another desk (the “Deadline Panel”) with Matthew Barnaby, a scarred-up Mike Peca, and Mike Keenan, who seemingly arrived two hours late. But that’s not all, Darren Dutchyshen’s in-studio recapping all the day’s news, Ray Ferraro and Keith Jones join via satellite, and reporters like Farhan Lalji are constantly checking in with the latest from all the Canadian teams.

The whole thing makes NBC’s Sunday Night Football look understaffed by comparison.

Worst of all, with Kovalchuk and Phaneuf already in different colours, absolutely nothing happened on the trade front. In fact, a deal wasn’t completed until almost 10:30am. TSN resembled one of those empty clothing stores with a full staff working. The whole time you’re thinking, “Wait, how does this place stay open?”

But, while the network spent the previous two days encouraging Canadians to call in sick and spend the day with them, TSN immediately made it clear they weren’t accountable for their own boring programming.

Gord Miller cracked a joke about the “big” Skoula to New Jersey trade, Dutchy put himself in the shoes of a fan, begging for a blockbuster, Bob McKenzie shrugged his wide shoulders and Duthie just shook his head, giving the viewers one of those “Hey, what are you going to do?” looks.

I dunno. How about starting the coverage at noon instead of 8am? Argh!!!

Meanwhile, Jay Onrait’s live blogging the whole mess on TSN.ca while his CTV Olympic Morning co-host Beverly Thomson is playing guitar hero. He’s shilling Gino Reda mugs, making jokes about Dutchy and Pierre’s close-talking, even ripping Dreger at one point, writing, “WOW! Dreger with some real news!”

See, that just isn’t fair. Onrait is hilarious. Canadians have the right to be angry at TSN for promoting TradeCentre like a national holiday, then announcing trades that wouldn’t even make the ticker on most days, but how can we make fun of a network that’s already making fun itself?

During TradeCentre, TSN is like the fat kid at school who, knowing he’s going to get made fun of, starts pulling up his shirt and slapping his belly. He/they beat you to the punch.

Here we are, wasting an entire day of work, refreshing our browsers just to find out Aaron Ward was traded. Or at home watching breaking news like this:

Duthie: “Okay, you have something for us guys.”

Miller: “Yes James, Avalanche acquire Stephane Yelle and Harrison Reed for Cedric Lalond-McNicoll and a 6th RD pick.”

…and we can’t even get angry because they all look as disappointed as we are.

After treating us like children all week by telling us Santa’s coming in his big red sleigh, TSN starts treating us as equals come Deadline Day, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“Now Billy, you’re old enough to know TradeCentre almost always sucks.”

As a Canadian who craves trade rumours like they’re crack rock, all I can do is shake my head along with Duthie, share a laugh with Onrait and hope Christmas is better next year.