NHL Center Ice on Dish Network

The NHL season kicks off in a few weeks, and once again hardcore hockey fans will have to decide if they want the NHL Center Ice package on Dish Network. A different problem is confronting hockey fans who subscribe to DIRECTV, as the Versus dispute may leave them in the dark when it comes to NHL action.

If you aren’t familiar with the NHL package on Dish Network, here are a few of the details. Basically, subscribers can add on NHL Center Ice to their regular Dish Network package for an additional fee. The current price quoted on the Dish Network website is 4 payments of $40.95, or $163.80 total. This price is good through October 31st, so it’s a good idea to subscribe now to the early bird price before the season gets started and the price goes up.

So what will you get with the NHL Center Ice package? Each week during the NHL season you will find up to 40 National Hockey League games on Dish Network channels 625 through 639. Most of these games will be in HD as well, as long as you have the right equipment to receive HD signal. Whether the games are in HD or not depends on who is the original carrier of the game, many of which come from Canadian carriers Rogers SportsNet, TSN and TSN2. Regional sports networks in the United States like Altitude Sports and CSN provide the feeds for most American based teams.

Subscribers to the Center Ice (NHL CI) package will also get the NHL Network free if they don’t already have it in their current Dish Network bundle. This network provides 24/7 coverage of the NHL, including about 80 games that are not in the Center Ice package. Additional games are offered during the 1st and 2nd rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, providing some of the best competition of they year. Various blackout rules do apply in certain situations, for a full explanation see the NHL Center Ice on DIRECTV review.

The NHL Center Ice package is also available on quite a few cable TV outlets like Comcast and Time Warner, and also through DIRECTV. Big NHL fans though may be switching over to Dish Network because of a carriage dispute. DIRECTV and Versus are battling over money, which has resulted in the Versus Network being removed for the time being from the DIRECTV lineup. How does this affect hockey fans?

The NHL also has contracts with Versus and NBC to carry quite a few games. Versus is set to carry 54 HD games this year, none of which will be shown in the NHL Center Ice package. That means that if the DIRECTV-Versus dispute is not resolved soon, fans who subscribe to DIRECTV will miss out on all of these games. The alternative for these fans would be to switch over to Dish Network or their local cable company for access to the Versus channel.

So Dish Network may be in a position they haven’t been in often – to offer sports programming that is not available on DIRECTV.