Paying the Piper

For the most part this season, it is as though the NHL seemed to simply get away with the potential effects of last year's lockout.

It was as though Katrina came, but left no destroyed homes and flooded communities in its wake.

The fans, to a large extent, did come back, and in most markets. The game was vastly improved, giving the sport a positive spin directly related to its on-ice product for the first time in years. Partway through the season, news began to surface that revenues might actually outstrip projections, which would mean the salary cap would increase substantially for next season.

Now, however, the NHL is finally going to have to deal with the real issue that was, along with the state of game, very much at the heart of the lockout and the league's business problems.

Three of the four conference finalists are set already with Buffalo, Carolina and Anaheim.

Edmonton, it appears, has very, very good chance of becoming the fourth.

That slate of teams, its fair to say, is not going to provide the NHL with an overwhelming opportunity to sell the sport.

With Edmonton, of course, Canada will be fine. But Canada's always fine.

In terms of the U.S., you couldn't have four markets of lesser impact than Buffalo, Raleigh, Edmonton and Orange County. Yes, all these teams are terrific, good to watch and run by capable managers and skilled coaches.

This is not about the quality or desirability of these teams.

This is about the fact the NHL has done a very, very poor job of selling its games and selling its players over the past 15 years, and so no American outside of Anaheim knows who Ryan Getzlaf is, and nobody outside of Tobacco Road could pick out Cam Ward from a police lineup.

In fact, the people on Tobacco Road probably couldn't. A lot of Canadians, to be fair, would struggle to identify Getzlaf and Ward, two native born sons who are among the bright young lights of the game.

With all the big markets - Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Toronto, Denver, Vancouver, Montreal - long eliminated from the post-season, this is where the NHL would start to see the results if they'd spent the past eight months aggressively pushing the players and personalities of all these other, smaller markets.

But they never did it. Indeed, the television deal with OLN contributed to this problem. Last week in Buffalo, a city that has been in the league for more than three decades, it was impossible to find a hotel or establishment where OLN games could be viewed on the off-nights of the Sabres-Senators series.

Then there were those ridiculous tai chi/soft porn/art of war "My NHL" commercials aired for most of the season showing pretend players pretending to play hockey and pretend fans pretending to be excited by it all.

Yeah, that was a hit. At least the NHL finally figured it out and started using the strength of the league - it's players - to sell the game on vastly improved "My Stanley Cup" spots in recent weeks. The NHL Players Association, meanwhile, has been too busy fighting its own civil war to make any impact at all within the new "partnership" with the league that was supposedly formed through the lockout.

But its all been too late, and the NHL is about to find out - again - how irrelevant it is to the overall North American sports landscape.

Without a clear, compelling strategy to market and sell the game better in the post-lockout era than was the case prior to the lockout, the opportunities that might be available to the league are, once more, going unmined.

And the cities left in the hunt for the Cup are going to be treated like a quartet of Hootersvilles.

This, of course, will be totally unfair to the Canes, Sabres, Ducks and Oilers, or the Sharks if they come back and win that series.

They don't deserve to be ignored. But south of the Canadian border and outside of their home cities, they surely are about to be.

Comments

[pete]

It's OK to criticize the NHL but they can't orchestrate the playoff senario. MLB wasn't crazy about the White Sox-Astros World Series either.

NBC did a nice feature on Eric Staal and his family. He's a charasmatic kid and has star marketing potential...I would expect we'll see a lot of him.

[Paul]

I've always wondered why the NHL only markets "the game" and not the players. Is there something in the NHLPA that prohibits this? Once you start to market the stars, you can then market the game. "Hey, that's Sundin. He plays hockey!" Right now it's, "That's hockey. Who are the players?"

If the players are ever allowed to wear their team logo on their jersey, you can take it another step. "Hey, that's Sundin. He plays hockey for the Maple Leafs."

Is this approach too obvious to sell the game outside of Canada? Am I missing something?

[James]

I think far too much is made of where the teams are from. If the final product is exciting, compelling hockey (as we have seen in these playoffs), I don't think people will care where the teams are from.

Instead, the personalities on those teams will be most important. For example, Rod Brind'amour is one of the most dynamic players in any sport in North America, and I think that these playoffs showcase both his talents and his tremendous leadership skills. Ditto for Eric Staal.

I am hopeful that hockey under the new, open-style rules will become a popular major sport in North America. (By the way, the move to OLN was not the NHL's choice -- ESPN decided to dump the NHL due to low ratings.)

The way hockey has caught on in the Raleigh area is a textbook study of how to sell the NHL. Build an exciting, explosive hockey team from the ground up, fill it with players with compelling stories (not whiny, overpaid superstars), put them in a great arena and the fans will suppport it.

[KEN ELDER]

Gary Bettman is going to have to face the fact that the "National" hockey league will never truly be "national."

Hockey is a great game but it is destined to essentially be a Canadian/Northern part of the USA game.

Atlanta had a team at one point. They left.
Colorado had a team at one point. They left.
San Jose kind of had a team at one point. they left.

So why would you put another team there again? The fact is that hockey doesn't play well in these markets. A hockey team in Dallas? Tampa Bay? Phoenix???? You have to be kidding me. These teams may fill their barns when doing well but just wait until Joe Sakic or Mike Modano retires and the Tampa Bay Lightning or Carolina don't make the playoffs and you'll see 6000-8000 people in those buildings.

Kids in Lubbock Texas are not going to pick up hockey sticks.
Kids in Jackson, Mississippi are not going to pick up hockey sticks.
Kids in Tampa are not going to pick up hockey sticks.

Its the same reason they don't have NASCAR races in Winnipeg or Edmonton.

Mr. Bettman would probably have better luck generating revenue for the league if he put teams in Stockholm and *gasp* Moscow.