Who the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks Cares

     You know your sport is in trouble when a month into the season, your fans haven’t even noticed that no games have been played.  You know your sport is in trouble when the biggest star in your sport has been retired for over five years.  You know your sport is in trouble when the television ratings for the climax of the season rivals that of a re-run of “Full House” (no disrespect to Bob Saget and the gang).  And everyone knows the NHL is not only in trouble, but up a creek, without a paddle, and in a quick sinking raft.
    Hockey is gone, for now, maybe for a while.  And who really even cares.  There may be a total of about six people, none of which are owners or players, who are actually upset that the NHL is M.I.A.  We don’t need hockey in America.  We don’t care if there is hockey in America.  We have professional football.  We have college football.  We have college basketball.  We have professional basketball (although its allure is fading fast).  And we are just coming off one of the greatest seasons of professional baseball.  Who cares about hockey?

    Well, it sure isn’t the media.  When you look in the papers or turn on the TV, there are more stories about horse racing than there are about hockey.  So instead of contemplating why players are throwing fits about their average salary being decreased to $1.3 million, fans are discussing the irony of a Ghostzapper win at the Breeder’s Cup Classic on Halloween weekend.  If there was another baseball strike, not only would there be a media frenzy, but the President would probably send the players to Guantanamo Bay for destroying the backbone of America.  And could you even imagine if there was no football on Sunday?  The whole country would be destroyed.  The factories would go under because their workers would all be depressed.  Beer companies would lose millions.  Twins would have no place left to advertise.  And morality just might become a staple of society, as churches may actually start being used.  Think of the uproar.  But hockey goes under, big deal.

    It’s surprising that hockey is the first of the four major sports to come become unraveled, when taking into account the activities over the past decade: Mario Lemieux’s comeback, Gretzky’s sendoff, patriotic feel of American hockey during the Olympics, and even the release of the movie “Miracle.”  The positives over the last decade, however, seem to have taken a backseat to the impact foreign players have had on the league.  The influx of Europeans and Russians populating the NHL may increase the skill level of the league, but it is decreasing its popularity.  How many people can even name the last five MVP’s?  For that matter, how many people can even name the last five NHL Stanley Cup Champions?  Not many, that’s for sure.

    Last season, the top 18 points leaders were all foreign players.  There are no stars that Americans can relate to anymore.  They can’t even relate to Canadians, as only four out of the top 10 points leaders were from the land to the north.  The NHL is about as American as a bratwurst.

    The lack of stars is another problem for the NHL.  The days of Gretzky, Lindros, and Messier are gone.  Who are the stars of today?  Martin St. Louis?  He might have been the star of last season, with 94 points, but two years before that he only had 35 points.  How can fans relate to players whose stats are going up and down more than a roller coaster at Cedar Point?  Jarome Iginla was the star of the 2001-2002 season, but he then went on to underachieve the following season, amassing about a third less points than in 2002.  And as NHL fans recall, wasn’t Jaromir Jagr supposed to be the next Gretzky?  Hardly.  Since scoring 121 points during his final season with the Penguins in 2000-2001, Jagr, has suited up with two teams in the past four years, and has seen his production drop off dramatically, culminating in a dismal 29 points last season.  How can the NHL expect to gain new fans, or even keep their old fans with no consistent stars?  It’s like trying to gain new music fans via Ashlee Simpson.  It is simply not possible.

    Combine this with the fact that the NHL is becoming more bloated than a post-dieting Oprah, it’s no wonder their TV ratings are about one-tenth of the NFL’s.  No one wants to watch the NHL on TV because their is no sense of speed and physicality that there is at a live arena.  This is true of most sports, but particularly hockey (just ask anyone who has actually been to an NHL game).  To counteract this problem, ticket prices should be lowered, considering that most of the NHL season is a period of doldrums.  It should be more economically efficient for the common fan, like baseball.  The average ticket price, however, is more than twice that of an average seat for a baseball game, at around $43.  Not many people are going to pay that kind of money for a sport that isn’t widely appreciated like football or basketball, especially in cities like Phoenix, Nashville, and Miami, where the only time ice is ever seen is in beverages.

    One would think that the players and owners would do try anything to catapult the NHL back to the forefront of American sports, but one would be wrong.  Unless the NHL starts relating more to common sports fans, hockey will only be rivaled by the likes of backgammon and Chinese checkers.  Because right now, hockey seems about as appealing as the idea of calling Teresa Heinz Kerry “first-lady.”  The players and owners give the impression, however, that hockey will be back, no problem.  There is a problem, though, no one else seems to mind that it is gone.