MattInTheCrown wrote:
Well, the bottom line is that they were overshadowed in the early 90's by a superior Bulls team. That's good for them, because ultimately, they were just a huge disappointment.
So the Blackhawks benefited from an unmaximized market share because they ended up not winning a Cup anyway? They had a funny way of showing those benefits for the next fifteen years. Most teams don't win Cups, especially when they run headlong into other teams' dynasties. Look at the Hawerchuk/Steen Jets that kept having to play the Gretzky/Messier Oilers in the first round. Look at the entire history of the Flyers after 1975.
You'll have to excuse the tangent, but one of the things that drives me nuts about the NHL is the way they purport to "grow the game." Do you think the Blackhawks have hit the saturation point in Chicago? Do you think that television ratings, hockey participation, and interest in general are as high as they can possibly get in a metropolis of over 9 million? I sure don't. You can say the same thing for Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Long Island, Washington, and a number of places where NHL interest is good but not
great. I'd say the only American city where hockey is as big as it can get is Buffalo, and that's because there's shit else to do in Western New York and it's practically Canada anyway. But instead of making sure that the NHL is maximized in the Northeast/Midwest, where it should be, they've been content to build on their collection of nibbles with even smaller nibbles in Miami, Phoenix, etc. It's like going to get seconds before you've finished your first plate. It'll never be baseball or football where it captures everyone from coast to coast, but there's no reason hockey can't be a big deal in the cities where it's played but for piss-poor, half-assed marketing efforts and a contentment with not having more than what they had. It was a terrible business plan and they'll never recover.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.