It's the NHL playoffs, which means it's time for television newscasters and personalities who haven't the first clue about hockey to start pretending like they care about the NHL. This is particularly true for those on NBC, the American rights holder for the NHL.
Poor Jimmy Fallon was clearly asked by his bosses at NBC to work the NHL into his show on Monday night. Games have already been shown on NBC Sports Network and CNBC, but the main channel will start showing games starting on Saturday, May 18th, and clearly want to build some buzz. Fallon has shown an ability to create some virality in the past and NBC hoped he'd do the same for the NHL playoffs.
One problem: it's not that Fallon doesn't know the first thing about hockey -- he doesn't know the second, third, or fourth thing either. One of those things he doesn't know is how to pronounce the names of any hockey player with a name more complicated than "Ryan." Fallon worked the NHL into one of his existing bits -- Late Night Superlatives -- with simultaneously hilarious and horribly awkward results.
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