Thursday, April 17, 2008
Why the NHL is Dead
The NHL playoffs are in full swing, kicking off this week.
The Bruins are playing the Canadiens, in what is a classic matchup with history going back all the way to the NHL's origin. The Pittsburgh Penguins feature what could be the most exciting player since Mario Lemieux in Sidney Crosby. The Washington Capitals have what could be the most prolific goal scorer the NHL has seen in many, many years in Alexander Ovechkin.
There have been multiple overtime playoff games, great goaltending, great scoring, a completely insane guy waving his stick hysterically in front of a goaltender, physical play, terrible yet entertaining officiating, and an all-around exciting first round of the playoffs.
Yet, nobody seems to care.
Sure, you have your hockey purists who will follow hockey no matter what, but the average sports fan just doesn't care.
The first round of the NHL playoffs is just something you watch if your local baseball team isn't playing that night. And it'll only get worse this weekend, when the NHL playoffs will be completely run off the map by the NBA playoffs.
I'm not trying to bash the NHL, I'm just pointing out one of the major issues facing the struggling league: apathy among average sports fans.
Ask the average sports fan to rate the professional sports, and it'll go something like this:
1) Football
2) Baseball (or basketball)
3) Basketball (or baseball)
4) NASCAR
5) Golf
6) Hockey
7) Soccer/Tennis
The sport that used to be referred to as the "Coolest Sport on Earth" is consistently taking a backseat to cars driving repeatedly in circles and golf.
But hey, it probably still beats out tennis and soccer. Unless we're talking about Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, anyway. And the average New England Revolution game draws about 20,000, while the average Bruins game draws closer to 10,000.
Kind of sad for an original six team in a city that was once referred to as the hub of hockey.
The thing is, at this point, I'm not sure what you can do to save hockey.
In Boston, it's gotten so bad that the "Garden" was half full of Canadien fans during this week's playoff games. To add insult to injury, the wonderful Bruins' ownership actually sold Canadian advertisements on the boards because ... get this ... no local advertisers were interested.
At one point, I actually heard the "Garden" overrun with a "Let's go Habs" chant.
I died a little inside that night — then I changed the channel back to the Red Sox game and forgot the Bruins existed again.
I've been harping on this for years, but when the NHL decided that FOX wasn't ponying up enough dough to keep "The Coolest Game on Earth" on the FOX Network it set them way, way back.
FOX was perfect for the NHL. Between the glowing puck, that little streak thing they put behind the puck on slapshots, the cool graphics, and the ridiculous amount of advertising they put into the sport, FOX was the best thing that ever happened to the NHL.
And now we have Versus? VERSUS? Are you kidding me?
First off, I'm not even sure what channel Versus is. Secondly, why would you take an already weakened product and latch it on to a struggling sports network nobody's ever heard of?
The NHL used to be great. The NHL playoffs used to be must-see-TV, even for none NHL fans. It's hardly appointment TV anymore. It's degraded into an afterthought.
Nothing more than a highlight on "SportsCenter." Somewhere between soccer and arena football. And I'm not sure what they need to do to fix the problem. I'm not sure it can be fixed.
In the minds of U.S. hockey fans, the sport has morphed into ... soccer. Something we'll get excited about once every four years when we pretend to care about the Olympics.
It's time to stop kidding ourselves. If there are four major professional sports in the United States, the NHL isn't one of them. If there are five, the NHL probably isn't one of them. If there are six, the NHL might be one of them.
It sucks, but it's where we are.
The NHL is dead.
The question is, how do we bring it back to life?
I'm SeanMC.
SeanMC is a senior writer for Bleacher Report and writes a column for Sports Central every other Thursday. You can read more articles by SeanMC on his blog.