Watchdog

As the NBA demonstrated last season, playing a lockout-truncated schedule is a good way to boost ratings, since each game takes on added importance.

So it has been in the NHL this year, with many teams posting big increases. But even taking that into consideration, the three teams in the New York area have been particularly impressive.

The last time Sports Business Journal studied all...

The seventh Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival opens next week, highlighted by the much-anticipated premiere of Kevin Connolly’s “Big Shot,’’ about the brief-but-notorious reign of John Spano as the Islanders’ owner.

But that is only one of nine sports-related films that will be shown, four of which are from the “Nine for IX’’ series that is part of the network’s celebration of the 40th anniversary...

The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival announced its slate Tuesday, beginning with a world premiere that figures to attract a lot of attention in these parts.

“Big Shot,’’ actor Kevin Connolly’s film about former Islanders owner/fraud John Spano, will debut April 19.

“I’ve always thought the expression ‘passion project’ was kind of a cliché until I started working on ‘Big Shot’ for ESPN,’’...

Brian Burke, the former GM of the Maple Leafs and a Providence native who played at Providence College, was asked Friday morning at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston about Rick DiPietro, in particular about DiPIetro's comments the other day to News 12 and Newsday.

Here is what Burke said:

"He’s a Boston kid. He’s a great kid. When an athlete gets overpaid, it’s...

Connor Schell, ESPN Films’ executive producer, often hears from celebrities interested in attaching their names to documentary projects without actually doing the legwork.

Not so for actor Kevin Connolly (“Entourage’’), an avid Islanders fan out of Patchogue-Medford High who wanted to explore the John Spano debacle, in which the man who briefly owned the team in the mid-1990s was exposed by...

Hockey players are generally a tough group of people. But they've got nothing on hockey reporters, specifically MSG Network rinkside reporter John Giannone.

Towards the end of the second period in Thursday's Rangers-Islanders game, Rangers defenseman Marc Staal tried to clear the puck out of the Rangers' zone, but it sailed over the boards towards the Rangers bench. Giannone was the unfortunate...

MSG is back with a second season of “The Garden Transformed’’ all this coming week, but the show hockey fans – remember hockey? – might find most interesting is Episode 2 Tuesday.

That night Denis Potvin will recall his 1979 hit on Ulf Nilsson that led to an enduring chant involving his name that I’m assuming I am not permitted to quote here.

“This was not funny at the time,’’ Potvin...

The Islanders’ ratings always are among the lowest in the NHL, but this season’s numbers were particularly dismal. Their games on MSG averaged 0.21 percent of homes in the New York area, down 32 percent from 0.31 in 2010-11.

The story was starkly different on the other side of the East River, as you might expect for the Eastern Conference’s top team. The Rangers’ average of 0.99 percent of...