Will hockey ever become popular in the US?

Cafe Society
21

But hockey is a TV-friendly sport. For over 50 years, it has been broadcast by TV crews who know how to show a hockey game, and the game has an immensely loyal TV audience. Unfortunately, American networks have chosen to learn little or nothing from Canadian TV crews and commentators who have been broadcasting the game for years; so you, the American viewer, are left with a crappy TV product. But millions of Canadians and people around the world enjoy what they see. Moreover, they enjoy the three 20-minute period game, changing on the fly, game stops dead when the final buzzer sounds, etc. Changing those rules changes the basic game of hockey, IMHO. Enough changes, and we’ll be left with nothing more than NBA on ice.

To answer the OP, I think hockey will only ever become popular in the US if Americans grow up with the sport, as they do with Little League baseball and Pop Warner football. Even then, its success is doubtful; look at how many American kids play soccer, yet pro soccer has never had much success in the US. Still, that’s my feeling why hockey is so popular in Canada: because we grow up with the game. Unless American kids do what Canadian kids do and play in organized leagues starting at age 5, and in unorganized pickup games at all ages, hockey will never be popular across the USA. And that doesn’t seem likely to happen. Hockey will remain popular in its traditional locations in the northeast and in a few others, sure; but not across the country. Maybe the NHL should realize that and think twice about the reasoning behind awarding a franchise to a place like Nashville, when Hamilton has been desperately wanting one for years.

22

[QUOTE=CJJ*]

[li]Eliminate on-the-fly substitutions; I never know who the hell is on the ice half the time. Change players only at stoppages, and if necessary develop a rule whereby a player on the ice can initiate a stoppage automatically.[/li][/QUOTE]

I’d just like to address this one and how much of a disaster this would be. Forwards take 45 second shifts, 90 at the outside. Defencemen, about 2 minutes (with some notable exceptions like Bobby Orr who would play 45 minutes of a game, but he was a bit of a freak of nature) Why? because they’re skating full out for that period. Taking away the change-on-the-fly would mean the players couldn’t possibly exert as much effort and you’d kill the flow and skill of the game, not to mention that player-initiated stoppages would be even worse. I can’t think of anything worse you could do to the game.

23

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
[li]Reduce the intermission time. This could be accomplished in several ways, but personally I’d be for breaking the game into 4 15-minute periods with only enough time for a resurfacing between 1-2 and 3-4.[/li][/quote]

NHL ice is bad enough as it is. The sport is much less enjoyable with the puck bouncing around willy-nilly.

[quote]
[li]Eliminate on-the-fly substitutions; I never know who the hell is on the ice half the time. Change players only at stoppages, and if necessary develop a rule whereby a player on the ice can initiate a stoppage automatically.[/li][/quote]

What makes hockey the best sport in the world is that players are sprinting full-tilt for 30 seconds to a minute, and then go back to the bench for a rest. Disallowing changes on the fly would destroy this – shifts would be minutes long, and no body can sprint for minutes on end. You’d also see a lot more whistles, and anything that slows the game down is a bad thing. The NHL recently improved the product greatly with several small rule changes designed to eliminate a lot of unnecessary whistles during play. Your proposal is a step in entirely the wrong direction.

[quote]
[li]Develop a better TV-timeout regimen. Right now I think there is only one scheduled per period (at the 10-minute mark). If it were me I’d mandate TV timeouts before any power play starts, but in general I’d be open to any ideas that allow more, shorter breaks in the action rather than long periods of action followed by long periods of inaction.[/li][/quote]

Currently, there are 2-3 TV-timeouts in each period. Honestly, you say that you watch NHL hockey?

[quote]
[li]Allow the linesmen to call penalties; it is utterly ridiculous that blantant penalties can occur directly in front of an official and nobody do anything about it.[/li][/quote]

NHL linesmen are able to call double-minors, major and match penalties. They very rarely exercise this ability, and if you actually talk to NHL officials(both refs and linesmen), they don’t want linesmen to be out there looking for penalties. The linesmen have a tough enough job as it is.

Why? The NBA does just fine without this rule. Games last for 60 minutes.

Anyway, player salaries are not as high as in other sports; the league’s highest-paid players are earning less than $8-million every season. NHL revenues are in excess of $2.4-billion per year, so I don’t think that they’re too far out of line.

One thing that would help the NHL’s TV presence is better cameramen. If the cameramen can follow and anticipate the play, the game is much easier to follow. If the cameraman loses sight of the puck too often, the TV experience sucks. If you can, watch Hockey Night in Canada some time and see if you see a difference.

24

How about shortening the length of the long season and the two month playoffs? Wrap up the season in April, not June.

25

With the teams abandoning Canada like they have been, I suspect hockey is fairly popular in the US. Maybe it’s because Colorado is 60% Minnesotans and New Yarkers, but it’s going strong around these parts. While no one cares about the Cup this year (I blame the Ducks) and the Av’s have been stinking up the Pepsi Center lately, we did just get another Central Hockey League team, and it’s fairly common for an event to be cut short for an Av’s game.

Baseball, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be doing so well around these parts.

26

This I wouldn’t have a problem with. leave the playoffs as they are, but cut down the regular season by a month. (But then, does anyone complain about the length of the NBA season? It’s just as long)

27

The last pro team to leave Canada was the Jets in 1996, which was a combination of arena issues and the Canadian dollar being close to its lowest values ever. With the financial climates improving (hello, par), and Ballsilie’s purchase of the Predators, we’re almost certainly getting another team back in Canada within, oh 5 years.

28

The puck is not hard to follow, or to notice going into the net. If you are an avid hockey fan, you don’t even watch the puck. Why would you? You know where the puck is instinctively by the way the play is developing. Sure, I glance at the puck from time to time, but I don’t watch it continuously. I bet you don’t watch the football only during football games, right? You know where the football is and you watch the play develop around it.

And the argument that you have to have grown up playing hockey is ridiculous too. There seem to be just as many female hockey fans here as male fans, and although some women do play, or have played hockey, it’s certainly the exception to the rule.

IMHO, Hockey is by far the greatest sport to watch on TV: It’s fast, it has enough goal scoring to make it interesting (unlike soccer - too few, or basketball - too many) and it can literally keep you on the edge of your seat in sudden death overtime.

29

Colorado is kind of a special case in the U.S. in regards to hockey. It is about the only place to have traditionally strong support for the game outside of New England and the Upper Midwest. The University of Denver was the dominant hockey school in the country in the 60’s and won back to back titles just a few years ago. Colorado College is also very strong and was dominant in the 50’s. I’m not sure why it is, as the only places where you can skate outside in the winter are the small mountain towns. The same goes for lacrosse and rugby - both are huge here for reasons I don’t understand. Surprisingly, we turn out few Olympic caliber downhill skiers. They all seem to come from New England and Idaho and Montana. Strange.

30

I can see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple. There have been several extremely well-funded, strongly-marketed attempts to get America into soccer, and none of them has caught on. I think a more fundamental problem might be that America’s attention span just isn’t geared to sports (e.g. soccer or hockey) where 5-2 is a high scoring blowout. The advice Bettman really needs to take from Stern is how to make his sport more exciting to the average American, a goal which Stern constantly pursues with off-season rules and enforcement tweaks.

31

I was discussing the issue of following the puck with my wife recently. I’ve learned how to follow the puck without always watching the puck itself, but she can only do it well live in the Shark Tank.
It’s much, much easier to follow on HDTV. We agreed it would be very nice to have an alternate TV broadcast with the old magic-glowing-puck graphic and more explainatory commentary. Since so much of the game is foreign to the average new viewer, it would be nice to ease into it instead of not knowing what going on all the time. Having it as an alternate feed would avoid insulting and boring more experienced fans.

32

Baseball Historical Totals (1871-present)

Total runs = 1,728,669
Total games = 379,712

Runs / Game = 4.55

33

Well, hockey’s pretty popular in the Northern United States, could you mean how can we get the South slightly off football to see the Carolina Hurrcanes or Atlanta Thrashers or some minor league team?

34

Swede here. Hockey is very, very popular here, and few of us have ever played the game. I certainly haven’t. These days, we rarely get frozen lakes either, and definitely not reliably enough to play hockey regularly. Playing hockey would be a very special thing, something you do to spice up skating, and probably expect to hurt yourself doing.

I don’t think that’s the answer.

[sub]I thought hockey was popular in the US, by the way. Shows what I know.[/sub]

35

Point somewhat taken. In response, I would offer the following two points:

First, that number includes the Dead Ball Eras. The number of runs per game in Major League Baseball today is much higher - double that. From the article:

Second, I think there’s a bit of a double standard for baseball anyway. A baseball fan expects a baseball game to be a little on the slow side: it’s three hours, most of it kind of laidback, with a few bursts of frantic activity. Hell, on most pitches the fielders don’t even have to move, much less run. Hockey, on the other hand, is expected (by the average American sports fan) to be more like basketball - an hour of relentless, furiously paced activity. And if your idea of “frantic” is 104-96, hockey’s going to fall short in that regard.

36

That’s not really a good statistic to bring out. Baseball has had several periods where fundamental changes to the game resulted in extremely low offense.

The popularity of baseball is directly linked to the offensive explosion of the Ruth era (although it was definitely popular before then, too.)

Baseball also appeals to Americans because every at-bat can change the game, every swing. And until the last out of the 9th inning, your team has a chance, because the game doesn’t end until the final out of the 9th inning.

With soccer there are large parts of the game where there’s little chance of anyone scoring, and because of its timed nature and the low level of offense come backs are rare.

37

I understand that the NHL’s TV ratings (in the US) are a problem, but here’s another data point:

Total attendance 2006-2007
(both based on 30 teams/41 home games)

NBA : 21,808,621
NHL : 20,857,288
So let’s not get too crazy with the ‘unpopularity of hockey’ theme.

38

Hockey does have a very loyal fanbase. They say of the Los Angeles area, there are 20,000 Kings fans in Los Angeles and they go to every game. It’s close to true. I was a season tickt holder and it seems the only folks who knew what was going on with the Kings was other season ticket holders.

39

And it’s not so unpopular that there still aren’t serious expansion plans, believe it or not.

40

This I don’t get. Hockey is face paced. Hell, A guy on skates moves a lot faster than a guy running. Plus it allows for hard contact where play isn’t stopped unless the contact is illegal (example High Sticking, Cross checking, elbowing, or Roughing) or an injury occurs.

On top of that there is the drama of the goal tender against the man charging at him with a potential 90 mile an hour slap shot. A great save is as exciting as a great goal

I really don’t understand the disconnect. Football to me is ok but it stops and starts so much there isn’t as much flow. Basketball has the flow but the high scores leave me cold. And Soccer… well damn any sport where players drop to the ground, roll around and cry after being brushed by the sleeve of another player… :wink: