Ryan O'Reilly Feature

Keep it Coming HBO!

This season of HBO 24/7 featured the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers. A number of players displayed their personalities, including Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.

      For the second straight season, HBO created a four-part series following two teams in anticipation of the Winter Classic. Last year, the show debuted with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals, chronicling their new found Eastern Conference rivalry featuring two of the biggest stars in the game, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. For those who aren't familiar with the idea, HBO got unlimited access to each team's dressing room and the players’ homes, essentially giving the viewers an all-access pass to their favourite players.

      The show got rave reviews last season, as people loved Bruce Boudreau's f-bomb induced rants in the dressing room and Dan Bylsma's more business-like coaching tactics. Of course, the show captured the hit that has severely affected the outlook for Sidney Crosby's career during last year's Winter Classic. The average viewer watching the Winter Classic obviously saw the hit, but if you watched the HBO episode after the game, it included a very revealing clip of Crosby talking about the incident. Thanks to HBO, it's pretty obvious that he didn't just have his 'bell rung', he actually had a concussion and shouldn't have played at all in the third period.

      This year's edition of the show featured the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers. Both teams had a lot of hilarious personalities that the average viewer probably didn't know about prior to the first episode. Some of the 'stars' of HBO 24/7 included:

Ilya Bryzgalov

      It's well known that goalies are a bit of a different breed (including yours truly). Some talk to their goal posts, some vomit before games and some have to listen to the same songs before every game. Well, Bryzgalov takes the term weird to a whole new level. In the first episode, he explains how he's been learning a lot about the universe.  The next episode showed more comedy gold from Bryzgalov, when his topics of choice varied from huskies, to beautiful blondes and how he wants to stop being a goalie!  The entire hockey world probably thinks of Bryzgalov as a completely different guy now thanks to the HBO coverage.

John Tortorella

      Prior to this season of 24/7, New York Rangers coach John Tortorella was always referred to as one of the most hard-nosed coaches in the NHL. It's widely known that his first two days of training camp are known as 'death' because no pucks are allowed on the ice and he uses the time to whip his players into game shape. There were several instances of Tortorella ripping into his team during the series (warning, explicit language used in the video). At the end of that clip, he walks out of the dressing room encouraging his players and that's the sign of a good coach. At one point in the series, Rangers blueliner Michael Del Zotto mentioned that 'Torts' was the reason his game has evolved this year. Also, the series shows how Tortorella has been a huge influence on Liam, a 10year old Rangers fan who suffers from cerebral palsy. 

      The show allows the viewer to feel like they're actually on the ice with the players, as each episode features snippets of some on-ice trash talking, what actually happens during a video review and players getting stitched up. Also, when Flyers forward Claude Giroux suffered a concussion, HBO showed 'G' go through several concussion tests before he was finally cleared to play. This gave the opportunity for the viewer to see what really goes on when a player is trying to recover from a concussion.

      The HBO 24/7 series has been a marveling success in each of its first two seasons and fans will definitely feel more connected to the players they witnessed behind the scenes in every episode. There are rumours swirling that the 2013 Winter Classic is going to be held at 'The Big House' in Michigan, with the Red Wings hosting the Toronto Maple Leafs. If this was the case, the success that HBO has enjoyed to date would be taken to an even higher level.