bigfan wrote:
Would like to hear from the hockey experts of why this sport can't be the major sport it claims it is.
You rang?
The fundamental issue that no one wants to confront is that hockey has little or no cultural foothold in so much of this country. Remember that until 1967, only four cities in the country had an NHL team. People romanticize the Original Six to death, but why? All it really was was a symptom of the league's utter lack of foresight or proactivity. The NHL had to be dragged kicking and screaming into being something resembling a full-fledged sports league. Los Angeles and Oakland got teams because CBS made them. St. Louis only got a team because the Norris family controlled the lease. Vancouver was allowed into the league begrudgingly because Toronto didn't want to give up territory they saw as theirs.
Toronto! Three time zones away! The business leadership has remained idiotic to this day, but now they've found themselves playing catch-up in a race that's long been lost. They sold eight expansion teams in nine years to anyone who was buying so that they could divide the fees among themselves and falsify a profit. They've approved sales to con artists and eventual felons with no vetting. They've gone to absurd lengths to maintain a team in Phoenix so they can tell NBC they're a "national sport," which they're not.
The sport, in and of itself, can be thrilling. Jai alai is thrilling, too, but if you don't live in Miami or the Basque Country, why would you ever give a fuck? The problem is that so many people have gone so long without hockey significantly permeating the culture, which tends to happen when you don't live in cold places, but the NHL persists that it's the NBA with ice. It's not. All the NHL ever could have been was a regional circuit in which the passion for the local hockey teams is just as great as the passion for anything else, with the concession of most niche markets where you can only hope to get enough people for appearances' sake.
As for TV, they
get The Big Television Deal. From the CBC, TSN, and Rogers. They're never going to get it on our side of the line. All the Bettman apologists crowed that he finally did with the ten-year NBC deal, but all that did was lock them into decent revenue at what could end up being below market value. You're right; there's never going to be enough TV money to keep all these teams in all these places alive, but the idiots in charge are trying to force it because they're still chasing the idea that one day, there might be, and for that, we've gotta say we're in Phoenix and Miami no matter what cost. It's never gonna happen, though.
_________________
Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
