Courtesy St. Louis Post Dispatch

(June 5, 2009) If you're looking for the Stanley Cup finals on radio, you can stop hitting the buttons. Unless you have the XM satellite service, you aren't finding the games.

Unlike years past, no national radio network is carrying the event. Thus in the St. Louis market — where listeners can hear indoor football, women's soccer, Frontier League baseball and high school sports — the championship series in one of the supposed "major'' sports is a no-show.

"In the past, the Stanley Cup finals were carried by Westwood One, but they don't have it this year and nobody offered it to us,'' said Jason Barrett, programming director at sports-talk station WXOS (101.1 FM).

"It's disappointing,'' added Barrett, who carried the Cup finals in previous years when he worked at KFNS. "I'm taking the NBA finals, but if someone had pitched the Stanley Cup finals I certainly would have looked at it. We didn't even get a pitch. Apparently they don't look to do much with it. A major sport should be carried on radio somewhere. Maybe they think XM is enough, but I don't think so. That's a nice 'other' thing to have, but you should have some local radio. That's how they're operating.''

Well, not quite. NHL director of radio Gregg Baldinger said the games are available, but with a caveat.

"There isn't a network right now, but if a local station wants to air the finals they can carry one of the (participating teams') broadcasts," he said. "They can call me and we'll work it out.''

That's not exactly an aggressive marketing strategy.

"Wouldn't you think the NHL might do a better job of trying to (get the broadcasts) out to people?'' said Dave Greene, general manager of all-sports outlet KFNS (590 AM, 100.7 FM). "That's crazy that they don't have a national radio outlet. Wow.''

He said that if he been contacted earlier, he would have considered carrying the series.

"But we never heard a thing,'' Greene said.

The other local all-sports station, KSLG (1380 AM), has a weak nighttime signal that makes it impractical for it to carry major events in the evening.

The bottom line is that the games aren't on in this, and other, NHL locations.

"The Stanley Cup finals should be heard someplace on radio, and if you want hockey fans to support the product then you've got to make it easier for them to find it,'' Barrett said. "Unfortunately they have made it harder to enjoy the product on both radio and TV and it's sad because great players like Sidney Crosby should be seen and heard much more than they currently are."

Muddying matters further is that it's not appealing to have a slanted local team's broadcast in other cities.

"I wouldn't want to pick up a Pittsburgh or Detroit broadcast where announcers are referring to things in their local markets when we're not even close in proximity to where they are,'' Barrett said.

But he said if the series goes to a seventh game he might pick that up despite the lack of a neutral broadcast.

Meanwhile, Steve Moore, director of programming and operations at Blues flagship station KMOX (1120 AM), summed things up.

"Our focus was the Blues, and once their season was over with, we kind of went on to do other things,'' he said.