A lot has been written in the wake of Rogers’ firing of George Stroumboulopoulos and several other Sportsnet on-air broadcasters. There’s a variety of takes on what went wrong. Many have come back to a single point: there’s a culture war in hockey.
The Globe and Mail’s resident TV critic, John Doyle, kicked this off with a scathing indictment of Rogers and the NHL for their failure to evolve to market hockey to a new generation of fan and condemning the sport to the slide in popularity in which it now finds itself.
Doyle frames Strombo’s firing as a final straw of sorts, which finally broke the Millennial fan, forever turning them away from hockey to other entertainment.