My colleague Matt May has a good idea for a way technology can help the NHL:

The NHL is going to need a full-court press to get and keep the fans' attention and interest. OLN will also need to increase its exposure, as it treats its NHL content as a draw for its other programming. And Comcast, which owns OLN, is heavily invested in digital cable and broadband Internet. Comcast will be pushing NHL content on its on-demand cable services as well as online.

So, we're most of the way there: a sports league and a television network both with a vested interest in reaching people more people than they currently have access to. This is a great situation for podcasting, and even better for video in RSS enclosures. I don't think we're quite ready for full-game feeds, and we may never need them, given the real-time nature of sporting events. But OLN will be creating hockey-related content around their coverage, and that's no good to them if nobody is watching it at 11pm. They will already be offering it on demand. Why not serve an MPEG for download on their own broadband network?

Hockey is not my favorite sport, but big time hockey is far and away the most thrilling major sport -- much more so than baseketball or footbal, which have their charms but do not have the primal intensity that hockey can generate, especially in the playoffs. The key is to figure out ways to translate this intensity to podcasts. I think it's possible.