LOS ANGELES – I must be naive, very naive. It never occurred to me that the Stanley Cup Finals would not be broadcast live in Los Angeles. I did my due diligence, I thought. I checked to make sure what time the game started on the West Coast, and even remember seeing an NBC somewhere in a listing.

It never occurred to me that the NBC channel that would carry the second game of the series that would determine the winner of the abreviated 2013 National Hockey League season would not be on a pay channel. It never entered my mind.

Suffice to say, I called Time Warner when channel 404 on the channel lineup for the San Fernando Valley turned up regularly scheduled Saturday evening programming that was anything but the game that came on the heels of one of the longest and most exciting Stanley Cup Finals games in memory. That game was somewhere else, but I admit that I panicked for a moment because I knew that something was horribly wrong. I won’t torture any sporadic readers. I spent the next 30 minutes scouring menues and channels and finally confirmed with a live Time Warner operator that that game, only the second in this seven game series, was only available here on the NBC Sports network that comes with a package that I could purchase at that moment. I declined.

Game three is also blacked out in Los Angeles. By game four, which is not, I won’t care anymore.