TV Networks Aren’t Alone in Counting on the Flyers

The Calgary Flames had just eliminated the San Jose Sharks from the NHL’s Western Conference finals, becoming the first Canadian team in a decade to reach the Stanley Cup finals.

Barry Melrose, a Canadian, was excited about this development.

“For the third straight series,” Melrose said on ESPN Wednesday night, “the Calgary Flames have shown everybody why hockey is the greatest sport in the world. Will beats skill. Calgary again beat a team with more talent, with more depth, with better players.”

“The greatest sport in the world,” of course, is in the eye of the beholder. So is enthusiasm over the notion of “Calgary Flames, potential NHL champions.” Melrose is an old hockey coach from Kelvington, Saskatchewan, reared on the same values the Flames brought to the first three rounds of these playoffs -- will over skill, determination over talent, grit over glitz.

King fans learned that about Melrose, also about a decade ago, when he took a team that had shot its way to the finals in 1993 and immediately retooled it, replacing attack-minded finesse players with grinders short on puck-handling flair but supposedly big on the lunch-bucket essentials.

Coincidentally or not, Melrose is the last coach to have lost to a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup finals.

Today, the Philadelphia Flyers play the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in a matchup some are calling the NHL’s last stand.

In the rearview mirror: a season the NHL can’t wait to forget, the season of Todd Bertuzzi and Mike Danton and TV ratings so low the networks have taken to looking at the sport as Arena Football on skates. Earlier this week, the NHL signed a new contract with the network of Arena Football, NBC, which will give Canada’s national sport the same treatment it gives mutant football -- no rights fee up front, advertising revenues to be split between the league and the network.

In the tunnel ahead: a possibly long, bitter and disastrous work stoppage, which partly explains why NBC was reluctant to cough up any rights fee up front.

Today, the Flyers will take to the ice as the only team separating the NHL from a Calgary-Tampa Bay finals. Canada would watch a Calgary-Tampa Bay finals. So would Melrose. It’s in his contract. But across America, Calgary-Tampa Bay could produce TV numbers so small, Nielsen researchers might presume the stoppage had already started.

If this is the end of hockey as we know it, curiosity seekers can bear witness to history by tuning in to Flyers-Lightning, Game 7, at 4 p.m., on ESPN2.

That’s because ESPN is covering the start of the end of the NBA’s Eastern Conference tournament (and aren’t we grateful for that?) -- Detroit at Indiana in Game 1 of the Eastern finals. Available for viewing this weekend:

TODAY

* Dodgers at Atlanta Braves

(Channel 11, 10:15 a.m.)

Before their series in Atlanta on Friday, the Dodgers had lost seven consecutive games, yet retained a share of first in the National League West. What does it say about a division in which the leader can go 0-7 in May and not relinquish the lead? As they say in the Dodgers’ clubhouse: “Location, location, location!”

* Home Depot Track and Field Invitational (Channel 4, 1 p.m.)

Warming up for the Olympics, NBC sends its cameras and announcers to the Home Depot Center for two hours of Marion Jones, Maurice Greene, Gail Devers and, NBC hopes, no breaking news on the BALCO front.

NBC no longer televises the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball, but it now covers horse racing, track and field and, soon, ice hockey, specializing in pastimes that used to be popular in this country, back in the last century.

* Phoenix Mercury at Connecticut Sun

(Channel 7, 1 p.m.)

When last spotted on national television, Diana Taurasi was leading the University of Connecticut to the NCAA women’s basketball title and ESPN to its highest-rated basketball telecast ever -- in between, of course, those relentless TV ads featuring the extraordinarily annoying Liz Phair song, “Extraordinary.”

Today, Taurasi returns to Connecticut as the Phoenix Mercury’s touted rookie, trying to rescue a league whose current problem can be found in the title of Phair’s first album, recorded a good decade before the great sellout, “Exile in Guyville.”

* Detroit Pistons at Indiana Pacers

(ESPN, 5 p.m.)

The NCAA men’s tournament had something similar to this during its most recent Final Four. I believe they called it, “Georgia Tech versus Oklahoma State.”

* Galaxy at San Jose Earthquakes

(Fox Sports World, 7 p.m; Channel 9, 8 p.m., delayed)

The Galaxy is coming off a 4-2 victory over D.C. United in which Freddy Adu came off the bench in the 60th minute and scored an MLS goal-of-the-year candidate -- dribbling through three defenders and curling the ball into the upper corner -- in the 67th minute.

The hype has been enormous, preposterous, but it’s obvious: The kid can play. Now, if only they would let him.

SUNDAY

* Baltimore Orioles at Angels

(Fox Sports Net, 1 p.m.)

It’s late May in Anaheim, Angel fans. Do you know where your favorite players are? That’s right, on the disabled list.

* Lakers at Minnesota Timberwolves

(TNT, 5:30 p.m.)

Charles Barkley says he’s a basketball analyst, not a football expert, and therefore won’t be moonlighting on “Monday Night Football.” Hmm. Lack of football expertise didn’t stop Lisa Guerrero or Dennis Miller. (And then there was Eric Dickerson, another issue altogether.) Barkley would put the spurs to that old horse, but when you get down to the logistics of the thing, quite literally, the booth might not be big enough for both Barkley and John Madden.