I am a season ticket holder of another NHL team in NY that is furthest away from you and I concur - I that I also feel that CI is the best sports package for the money for what you get. But at least you have waiting lists up there... With the rebuilding that we're going through this year, they will have to pay people to come to the games.
I've always subscribed to CI on cable, and have always been very disappointed with the SD PQ that we would get since the games were never in HD, but I also have DishNetwork and recently upgraded to HD. I haven't subbed for CI for this season because I was wondering how it was on Dish as opposed to cable but if Dish is going to have at least some of the games in HD then I'm going to sub with Dish because I don't think cable is going to put any of the games in HD unless I'm mistaken.
Did Dish have a lot of CI games in HD last year?
Last year there were many HD games but I know of NO service D* or cable who had the CBC TSN HD feeds. Now the NHL network had some HD from TSN I think that this is because the NHL Network is based in Canada. I don't think that any us TV service had any Canadian HD feeds I don't have any idea why this is but it seems as though it is.
Also E* had many duel feeds some times they had four feeds for the same game two HD and two SD.