Fans of smaller market teams, all they seem to want is some attention for their team from national news outlets. NBCSN released their schedule on Monday and the Blue Jackets will have two national games, Monday February, 18th against Tampa Bay and Thursday March, 7th against the Penguins. That’s one more than they had last season but many felt it wasn’t enough for one of the young up and coming teams in the league. Fans were displeased and you even had the Blue Jackets twitter account throwing shade.

BREAKING NEWS: #CBJ to Double National TV Appearances After Posting 4th-Most Wins in NHL Over Past Two Seasons 🙄 https://t.co/E9f80PVP9m

— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 13, 2018

If the Jackets want to get national attention they need to do more than just win games. They need to build themselves up as a team that is compelling to watch and can draw viewers from other markets. They don’t get more national games as they don’t get the ratings that a Chicago or Washington does.

In order to build that up you have to win when it matters most: the playoffs. Making the playoffs is a start but you need to make it past the first round. The first round has so much going on its hard to follow each and every series super close. As you get deeper in the playoffs there are less games and more of the focus is on your team. That’s how you get more media attention on players like Seth Jones and Zach Werenski, the more people you get watching them the better.

That is what the Jackets really need. Jones and Werenski need to become the faces of this franchise. Right now it’s Sergei Bobrovksy and Artemi Panarin and understandably so, they are the best players on the team. Unfortunately since both of them are Russian they don’t speak much English and don’t do a ton of interviews. You don’t see them a ton off the ice doing interviews and what not and there is a little bit of the out of sight out of mind thing with the national media.

The other thing the Jackets can do to get more national attention is to turn their team into one fans of other teams want to see. The best way to do that is a big trade. We have seen this in the NBA where the Toronto Raptors have been a good team for a few seasons but couldn’t get it done in the playoffs and weren’t getting a ton of coverage south of the boarder. This off-season they make a huge trade bringing Kawhi Leonard and are now scheduled for 15 nationally televised for this upcoming season. If the Jackets made a trade that brought them say an Erik Karlsson, we would be seeing them much more on NBCSN.

Finally the last things Jackets fans can do is when these NBCSN games happen, watch them. Money and viewership talks. If there is demand for Jackets games NBC will have to broadcast more in the future.

You can follow me on Twitter @PaulBerthelot

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