Today, we wrap up the trio of posts on enhancing your experience as a fan of the NHL. JJ brought you a piece on high definition broadcasts and Graham wrote up a piece on fan/player interaction. I'm going to try my hand at it today with a suggestion as to something that I think would help enhance the fan experience.

There's no doubt about it, we thrive on visual stimulation when it comes to sports. Radio is all well and good and is a fine institution but does it really do justice to a Pavel Datsyuk dangle or a Nicklas Lidstrom stick check? I think you'll all agree with me that it doesn't. For proof, how many different angles do you usually see a replay of a goal from? Usually, it's somewhere between three to five different angles. Do you need all of those different angles to see the end result? No, not at all. But, what those different angles do help to accomplish is a better sense of the spatial mapping of the players on the ice surface. How close was the goalie to saving the puck? How many times did the puck bounce before he was able to settle it down? How far away from the defender was the forward when he let the shot go? We love to see this stuff, even if it's in a sometimes overwhelming amount that we see it. We love to see every view possible to try and get a feel for what the players are seeing on the ice as they make the plays. 

So what's my solution? Take the jump.

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One thing that we as hockey fans have always prided ourselves on has been how down-to-Earth the players appear to be. The notion of an NHL professional as a "prima donna" is much rarer than in other sports. These are guys that we feel we can identify with on some level, and for years we have wanted to get to know them better. In the past, the only way we could learn about the players was through interviews and shows like NHLPA's "Be A Player". However, if Tiger Woods and others have taught us anything, it's that an athlete can construct and maintain a public image that is not in line with their private lives. The advent of social media has broken down many of the barriers that exist between professionals and fans. Personally, I think they can go even further. Follow me after the jump where we'll tweet this mother up.

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One of the main conversation pieces about the draw of hockey as a product has remained that the game loses a lot of its speed when the viewer switches from being live at an event and watching at home on the ol' idiot box.   Anybody who has seen a game live can attest to that.  While even on television, hockey still looks like a whirling blur of non-stop action compared to other televised sports (unless you're watching the Minnesota Wild play), the atmosphere is lost and the picture is too narrow for the scope of the game.

Thankfully, our wonderously futuristic society (yes, even sans-flying cars) has made a huge leap toward bridging the gap between live and televised hockey.  While it's likely nothing will ever truly compare to the thrill of being in the stands when some jerk two rows behind you yells something about your mother because of the name on the back of your jersey, at least technology is working to solve the problem that old hockey broadcasts don't show enough of the ice at any point in time.  That's right, kiddies, it's been said before and I'll say it again, high definition television kicks ass.

With the old 4:3 picture ratio, the only way you could see all the skaters on the ice is if your entire team was doing something stupid or if the guy producing the broadcast thought he was Tony Scott, rapidly switching between the high camera angle and the behind-the-net cam that's almost universally reviled by people who were trying to track the action when some dick with a headset got delusions of Emmys in his fat head.  Squaring the ratio to 16:9 gives a much wider picture and allows fans to track an entire zone at once, so they can tell what their entire squad is up to at any given point (provided both that the cameraman doesn't have the puck-tracking skills of Vesa Toskala and that your team has wingers who come past center ice on the back check, that is).

But, the widened ratio is only part of the equation when talking about how high-def makes watching hockey that much better.  Join me after the jump for more:

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