Simple solution, why doesn't the media just ignore the situation, or just report the facts & decline to give any commentary.

So stop reporting the news and stop commenting on the news? So in other words, your solution is for the media to stop being media.

In regards to Pride Night, I think it's important to respect the fact that players shouldn't be forced to wear the jersey if they have strong religious beliefs.   We shouldn't judge the validity of their beliefs. Religion is a personal thing, & the strength & type of worship/beliefs vary from person to person.   

It has nothing to do with the validity of their beliefs or lack thereof. It's just the simple, basic truth that attributing your moral philosophy to your religion doesn't exempt you from the judgements we all face for our values and the effects they have on other people. If someone believed something almost universally agreed upon as awful, like adult men should be able to marry children, then it shouldn't matter if they believed that because of a deeply and perhaps genuinely believed religious conviction or just because they were a garden variety creep. It's still a terrible thing for them to believe and should be rightly condemned.

Chicago not having pride jerseys because they might upset their Russian players.  Trash organization

The NHL is just getting consistently and thoroughly killed on this issue. They look at best incompetent and at worst actively opposed to the sort of inclusion they're supposedly trying to put forth. I genuinely can't believe anyone at the League office thinks their response is going well.

Would be nice to centre the players that are actively supportive (Dermott, JvR, etc) instead of platforming dissenters

I appreciate the sentiment there but at this point it's really more about the NHL's response and stance as an institution than it is individual players and their beliefs.

Dub is a dub is a dub. On to the next one.

Admittedly I'm not expecting a great deal of rigorous intellectual consistency here but getting a statement like this from a player I think does a great job of highlighting the problem inherent both with the players and the NHL's messaging on this. He is choosing, by his own words, not to endorse "something". But what is that something? Is it just being gay? Or having some measure of pride in being gay as opposed to shame? A word that often comes up among defenders of this position is "lifestyle" but your sexual orientation doesn't define your lifestyle. There are celibate gay people and married with kids gay people and gay people who are out there having sex with a bunch of different partners just as it's true with straight people.

And where's the courage of his convictions? If you think what you're being asked to "endorse" here is bad enough that you're not willing to take part, why would you think it should be welcomed into the game of hockey? Either this is a bad thing you need to take a stand against or it isn't.

Someone really needs to sit down with Gary Bettman and ask him three very simple and very fair questions:

1. Would he be just as open to players expressing their "individual rights" objecting to, say, something like MLK day on the basis of them being racist.

2. If not, what's the tangible difference in the NHL's eyes?

3. If either question 1 or 2 have a meaningful answer, can Hockey really be said to be open to everyone?

At some point the league has to take a meaningful and clear position here.

https://twitter.com/cmasisak22/status/1637183063900983297

And on it goes, with some ex-Leaf news thrown in there.

https://twitter.com/RussoHockey/status/1633263508719583232

Again, as a rule, you probably don't want to engage in advocacy if you're not actually behind it. MLB doesn't have Jackie Robinson day and then let players beg off if they don't like black people.

https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1633132145295147009

Is it a good thing when the most popular voice on the network paying you for your media rights says your sport doesn't matter?

Haha maybe! But Matthews is a known quantity and him rounding back to health and form pushes the needle tangibly. 

Yeah, he's also already on the team.

Load manage and rest up Matthews so he can be your top-6 deadline acquisition.

Some real "College UFA's are basically 1st round picks" energy here.

Ultimately the puck needs to go in the net but I feel a bit more confident that this team can pot some scrappy goals out of their bottom 6.  As much as the big earners haven't had a 10 point in 5 game playoff series, the lack of bottom 6 scoring has killed them as teams shutting down Matthews/Marner pretty much guaranteed a 3-2 game or lower.

That's why I still kind of think they're a scorer short. I still look at the team and see two scoring lines and two lines that will struggle to contribute offense.

Like exclusively Kane? What if it was like NYR and it was Kane & Tarasenko?

I guess? Adding both Tarasenko and Kane to the Leafs would either force you to switch Nylander to RW or use one of their RW's on the 3rd line and I don't think Tarasenko adds much in that context. You'd be better off adding a defenseman there I think.

The Leafs made a lot of changes and I think they're probably a bit better at the edges but I'd still probably have rather gambled on Kane's upside.

Well, I said I'd wait until post deadline to make a statement on the collective moves Dubas made so here is my verdict...

Eh, seems ok. I'd probably have been more excited if he'd just added Kane or some other top 6 scorer but there you go.

The RSN problem exists for many team sports & others - not just the NHL.

Right. Nobody said this was exclusive to the NHL. This is a major and significant issue throughout sports.

In terms of revenues and the NHL cap, because the proportion of broadcast revenues is smaller in the NHL than the other major sports leagues, it is not as troublesome proportionally.

This largely depends on what you mean by "the other sports leagues". The NFL, for instance, isn't affected at all because they didn't do any business with RSNs. MLS had already signed their rights over to Apple so ditto. The NBA has a much more valuable national deal and is a much more popular sport in the US and would have a much easier time selling streaming rights as it's a much more popular sport in the US.

Further, for some time, the writing has been on the wall for cable. There are already some alternate deals in place for streaming or alternatives. MLB is apparently looking at setting up their own RSN. The NHL is apparently looking at doing what they've done in Europe to provide the NHL to fans of Euros playing in the NHL: partnering more with ESPN.

This here is pretty good evidence of just how substantial a problem this is. The only two solutions going forward you even have suggested are something entirely vague about "partnering" with ESPN(a national channel with little appetite for the content RSN's had) and MLB thinking about setting up their own RSN which, as you yourself point out, means setting up shop in a marketplace that we all know is dying a slow and predictable death. It also makes absolutely no sense anyways as it wouldn't just be about setting up a single RSN but one per team affected and unless MLB is going to become a sports right bidder you'd be trying to sell a cable network with only inventory from a sport that doesn't play for 6 months of the year. RSN's are going out of business because the marketplace is changing drastically and cable is dying and right now even industry insiders are sort of shrugging their shoulders trying to come up with alternatives.

I'm not sure asking "How might this seismic change in people's media consumption habits affect the cap long term" really qualifies as "hand-wringing" over it but ignoring that this is a big deal is just sticking your head in the sand. I think any reasonable person could look at the NHL as it currently exists and see that there are a lot of teams that aren't particularly well suited to experience a significant disruption in their local TV revenues with no real concrete alternatives ahead.

Anyways, if anyone is interested in a discussion on these matters among people intimately involved with this I'd recommend this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPrMm4D0kg&ab_channel=LeBatardShow which is a sports business podcast featuring the ex-President of ESPN and the former President of MLB's Miami Marlins.