If anyone tuned into Monday's Rangers/Red Wings' game in Detroit on Versus and wondered why Mike "Doc" Emrick, Eddie Olczyk & Pierre McGuire described the game, there's a reason for it.

It turns out that when the $30 billion joint venture between Versus' parent company Comcast & NBC's parent company General Electric became a done deal about a week to 10 days ago, Versus and its programming became part of the newly reorganized NBC Sports Group. It appears to be only the beginning.

Not only has NBC Sports' Chairman Dick Ebersol already put his stamp in making massive personnel changes at the former Outdoor Life Network and other Comcast-owned sports properties such as Golf Channel, the idea is to improve the quality of the networks' NHL broadcast and enhance their chances of keeping the National Hockey League on their outlets beyond this season.

There has been a great deal of speculation regarding where the U.S. broadcast rights to the NHL are headed, but one source close to the negotiations says that talks are continuing on a long-term deal between 4 and 7 years to keep the games in this country on NBC & Versus for quite sometime to come.

There's plenty more on this story, including why it's a longshot for ESPN to get the U.S. NHL rights back on their air, by clicking onto the following link:

http://nhl-red-light.si.com/2011/02/08/ ... topstories