A Second Chance For the NHL?

One of the artifacts from hockey's last golden age hangs on a wall at the Joseph A. Tomon Jr. Funeral Home in Ellport, PA.

Tomon, one of the biggest dealers of game-worn NHL jerseys in North America, has Mario Lemieux's rookie contract framed and mounted on a wall in his living quarters, almost directly above the casket showroom.

On a shelf nearby, Tomon has one of Jaromir Jagr's paychecks — it's about $57,000 and change, net, for two weeks.

But I digress.

For the first time in about a quarter century, the NHL appears to be on the verge of another golden era. In an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, professional hockey in North America sees the light at the end of the tunnel and it's not an oncoming train.

That light is partly the glow of a bright future.

Next season, players will be outfitted in new uniforms that are more aerodynamic and less absorbent, and therefore less heavy late in games, than their current apparel.

Hockey aficionados are still excited about the prospect of high-definition televisions, which will enable more households to actually see the puck on the small screen for the first time ever.

And even the present isn't so bad.

Officials are betraying their own instincts and actually calling interference and hooking. They're even calling penalties — gasp! — in overtime. The size of goalie padding is down and scoring is up, particularly in the Eastern Conference.

For the traditional fans who like defense hitting and the occasional fight, there's the Western Conference.

Most importantly, the league has a telegenic star in Sidney Crosby — who, in an sport increasingly dominated by Eastern Europeans and historically dominated by French-Canadians — speaks English as a first language.

Crosby is the real deal, the kind of guy who can break up the constant stream of NBA and college basketball highlights during the "Top 10 Plays" segment on "SportsCenter." He's Wayne Gretzky with size, Alexei Kovalev with vision, Lemieux with speed.

Just in the past couple of weeks, Crosby has slotted goals while being tripped forward onto his face and knocked down onto his back.

And his contributions don't stop with scoring highlight-reel goals. Against Toronto last week, he carried into the offensive end, where he was jumped by three Maple Leafs. Crosby off-loaded the puck to Mark Recchi, who was wide open for a near-uncontested goal.

Crosby, the league's top scorer, is averaging 1.67 points a game. And he's only 19.

It's just too bad no one is around to see it.

Except for the one or two weekend games on NBC, the only way most of America gets to see the NHL is on their local FOX Sports cable affiliate. That isn't too bad for those of us in the Pittsburgh area — we get to see Crosby on a regular basis.

But aside from the Versus channel, which isn't available on most U.S. cable systems, there is no five-night-a-week outlet for out-of-town NHL games.

It's time for hockey's overlords to approach ESPN and FOX, hat in hand, and ask what the NHL needs to do to break up the steady diet of treys and dunks with skates, sticks, and pucks two or three nights a week.

Most likely, that's going to involve the league paying rights fees to the networks in return for a percentage of ad revenues because its contract with NBC calls only for a percentage of sponsorship money.

But that's the price hockey has to pay for wasting its first golden age without allowing the sport to gain a foothold in the United States.

The NHL's assets are a more exciting style of play and the league's best player since Gretzky and Lemieux were in their primes.

Its liability is a lack of visibility, which creates a vacuum filled by nuggets like stats that indicate bowling is a bigger TV draw than hockey or a report in the Feb. 12 issue of Sports Illustrated (the one with Peyton Manning on the cover) that 736 households were tuned to a New Jersey game against the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Panthers.

That has to change. Hockey might be more compelling than any other sport when viewed in person, but television is what really counts.

And most of the country's cable systems have 100 channels and nothing on ice.