Incidentally, the attendance figures will also surprise those who would emphasize problems of geography, climate and historical success.
Here are the worst teams for 2006-07 attendance:
25 Boston
26 New Jersey
27 Washington
28 NY Islanders
29 Chicago
30 St. Louis
And I hold absolutely nothing against Chicago hockey fans for not supporting the Blackhawks. Chicago’s a great hockey town - the AHL Wolves actually outdraw the Blackhawks - but Bill Wirtz is, if not the worst, one of at least the top 5 worst owners in pro sports. He’d be right at home in the days of the 1950s NHL with the Norrises.
This is exactly my point; the NHL will remain a niche sport in America unless fundamental changes are made to the game itself; it’s no longer a matter of simply marketing it correctly. We can argue about whether or not the changes should be made, but I really thought the idea that hockey is one of the tougher sports for a casual fan to follow was beyond debate.
If the NHL wishes to gain an American audience, they have to make it more appealing to the TV viewer. I agree with garygnu that following it on HDTV is much easier, and the NHL would be wise to pursue this more agressively (if you’re going to be on a small network like Versus, at least find one that broadcasts in HD).
I’m sorry, but casual fans do have trouble following the puck and telling immediately if a goal has scored (even in HD, although it’s not nearly as tough). I’m not just talking about myself. There’s this 1998 poll which a sampling of sports fans (28% were hockey fans) were asked if it was difficult to follow the puck (38% yes) and whether it was generally difficult to follow the game on TV (35% said “somewhat difficult” or worse). It’s an old SI poll, but do you think the numbers are higher or lower today? Why do you think Fox experimented with the FoxTrax puck in the '90s?
I agree that watching the play develop is a better way to watch a hockey game, but this is going to take a lot more education and patience than the NHL has ever displayed. And, it seems, diehard hockey fans; with all due respect, their reaction to the Fox Trax puck was so over-the-top that IMO the NHL has been gunshy about making any technical innovations to help the casual fan. NASCAR, on the other hand, has embraced technology; their broadcasts on Fox and DirecTV have made the sport more accesible to the casual fan, not less.
PTI just reported the game last night got a lower rating than “Build a Better Burger” on Food Network, and 20 year old reruns of Mama’s Family- Ouch!
Uhhh there was no game last night…perhaps if you waited a day your joke would work
Dear god no. Vegas is bad enough, but Jerry Bruckheimer? What’s the team name going to be? The Gratuitous Explosions? The Shitty Movies?
1)I’ll agree with what seems to be the majority that hockey would be more popular if more people played it. Promote more recreational leagues and roller hockey leagues. Get people interested in the sport.
2)Contraction. There’s no reason to have as many teams as the league has. Certainly no reason to have the number of southern teams. Cut some. Move the rest north. The smaller number of teams will help concentrate the talent that is out there and improve the product overall. If you really need all the teams, expand the number of minor league teams. Lower costs for owners and lower ticket prices.
3)Improve the presentation of the product. Start with getting the NHL the hell off of Versus. A fair amount of people simply don’t have it, and those that do often can barely find it. Next you fire the chuckleheads that have been handling the national broadcasts. They sound like they barely understand what they are talking about, which is sad since a fair number of them used to be players. Promote some of the local announcers. Grab the best of the ESPN crew.
4)Stop trying to sanitize the sport. I’m not trying to say that there aren’t some things that need to be fixed (head shots in particular are getting bed), but you have to keep the physicality. Yes. That means fighting. Fighting is a part of the game and it gets the fans on their feet. It also helps protect those precious young stars that the league is trying to hard to [del]pimp[/del] promote. The best way to keep fighting from running rampant is to do exactly what the league has been doing: speeding up the game. One dimensional goons aren’t falling out of favor because of the instigator rule (which needs to be dropped altogether). They’re disappearing because they are a liability on the ice. The good part is that you get players who are talented and can fight (Iginla, Shanahan, and the like). Heart and goal players like that really sell jerseys.
5)Fix the schedule. Eight games against teams in your division doesn’t build rivalries. It creates boredom. Halfway through the season and I’m thinking “Nashville again? We just played them twice last week.” Start with at least one game against each team in the league and expand the schedule from there. Sidney Crosby is great and all, but he’d be far easier to market if he played at least once in every arena. Play up the occasions when the original six teams play each other. Tradition and all.
No, thats the point- it was told like it wasn’t a joke, like it was really true. And not tomorrow, I meant the last game played. And I believe the shows mentioned did air opposite the game, but I guess it could have been a joke on their part- not mine.
Hockey will never become popular in the U.S. no matter how greatly the rules are tweaked. It runs into two cultural problems
I think this is an excellent point. True or not, many of the goals scored in Hockey and Soccer look “flukey”; teams don’t really build up a scoring chance as they take advantage of some lucky opportunity or boneheaded defensive mistake. That makes a game difficult to follow; you don’t know when a critical moment is going to come, so it’s much harder to undersdtand an overall game strategy.
I stand corrected. I find it surprising that one would expect the number of TV timeouts in a period to be common knowledge to casual fans; I’m not sure how many there are in a college basketball game, and I watch quite a bit more of that.
Not really; a shot in the NBA that leaves the player’s hand before time expires counts; this is not the case in the NHL. I thought, given the number of sticks that touch the puck (not to mention the presence of a goalkeeper) that a similar rule in the NHL would be impractical, hence the requirement to clear the puck. t’s a minor point, but I thought it would develop more critical moments that fans enjoy with a minimum impact on the “purity” of the sport.
College basketball has four TV timeouts each half. They come at the first dead ball after the 16, 12, 8, and 4 minute marks. It’s been that way for years. Announcers even refer to the “under 16 timeout” and such.
The number of goals scored in hockey that would be “buzzer beaters” is pretty low. Hockey is like soccer. The puck has to go across the line before time expires just like the ball has to cross the line before the whistle blows to end the half. I’ve never heard a hockey fan complain about the rules at the end. The current rule is much easier to enforce. All you have to do is have the scoreboard clock lock out the goal light and you don’t have any discussions if a shot was taken in time.