said by zod5000:Surely it can't be that hard to buy the rights to some games from other leagues and put them on the air. Without hockey we have 4 sports channels (tsn,tsn2, sportsnet, sportsnet one) with nothing to air. There's football on Thurs/Sun/Mon (mostly on Sunday) and that's it. I would think the sports channels would be eager to find some content to air.
I would think that the problem would be (at least) threefold:
1) finding content that people would be interested in watching,
2) getting rights to content that doesn't already have the rights signed for in some other way,
3) getting a deal that is flexible so the network can walk away at any time when the NHL comes back.
I've watched some feeds from AHL games, and the production is around the level that Rogers 22 (local cableco station) does for OHL games -- that is to say, pretty amateurish. If the big networks were to want to air AHL games, they'd have to ramp up the production quality a fair bit before it would be palatable to the average Joe SixPack hockey fan, and that costs a lot of money. The teams are also not in the big centres where the networks are located (exceptions: Toronto Marlies, Hamilton Bulldogs), and even when they are they don't always draw that well from the hometown fanbase (eg/ Marlies have only sold out one game this season) so there's a big question as to whether the content would be of interest and worth the investment.
Sportsnet used to do an "OHL game of the week" but I'm not sure if they still do.
I too am surprised that there isn't some sort of work to get live AHL/OHL/KHL hockey on Canadian sports channels, but I imagine the work to get it there is substantial and until the season is cancelled, there is little appetite to do it when the lockout could end at any time.