Penguins Broadcasters Think Talking Crosby Is More Important Than Injured Player

Dominik at SBN's Lighthouse Hockey was less than pleased with the FSN Pittsburgh broadcasting crew, comprised of play-by-play man Paul Steigerwald and color analyst Bob Errey, during their coverage of Alexei Ponikarovsky's hit on Isles' forward Josh Bailey. View the video here.

Here's what was said about the issue at Lighthouse Hockey.

Just a poor job by the Penguins broadcast team and production all around during this incident. Awful, really.

For the Sutton hit, they focused on how Sutton should have held up -- which he should have, no argument there, even if it was an in-tight split-second decision. Naturally, the camera focused on the injury and reactions to the injury the entire time Dupuis was being attended to.

Yet on the Ponikarovsky hit, the same announcers talk about Bailey "turning" (really? Poni started several feet away with the numbers in view the whole time) and then quickly move on to wondering -- and chuckling about -- whether Sidney Crosby will win the scoring title. It's like they were kids distracted by balloons. Or adults making out during "Schindler's List."

And the cameras? We hardly see much time of Bailey on the ice -- they actually spend more camera time showing Sidney Crosby talking whining to the refs than they do showing the injured player lying prone on the ice. Nice work.

To be clear, both hits are wrong and should be avoided. But I'll take Bob Errey and Paul Steigerwald's compassionate humanist pleas for cleaner checks more seriously once they pretend to give a damn about other teams' players, too.

Bailey will be out 4-6 weeks with facial fractures.