Fundamentally flawed

Feeling inspired by yesterday's blog posting, I sat down and watched the entire Red Wings/Penguins Game 3 last night. Admittedly it was the first time that I had watched a full hockey game since Game 6 of last year's Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh in which the Wings wrapped up their claim of Lord Stanley's Cup.

I loved it.

Versus does a very nice job with their hockey coverage. I expected to get low-resolution video with cheesy-looking graphics - along the lines of a regional channel, like Fox Sports. But I was pleasantly surprised by a very high-quality broadcast with sharp visuals, nice sound clips and a broadcast team that had some personality. There were several times that I caught myself laughing out loud at some of the snarky comments that the play-by-play guy (whose name I never really caught), which never happens.

The game was a lot of fun, too. Within a few minutes, there was already a barrage of goals. And TV ratings can attest to this: the more offense there is, the better the ratings are. Take football out of the equation, because it is going to get the ratings regardless, and see what you are left with. Basketball gets higher ratings, and the lower-scoring baseball and hockey get lower ratings. If you took a look at the ratings, I think that it would reflect that trend as there wasn't another goal scored until the final ten minutes of the third period, and ratings would start to slowly decline and stay steady from that point in the third on.

For a stretch of years in which defense became the primary focus in the NBA, the Finals ratings suffered, starting in the 2004 Finals in which the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs. Not until last year when the high-scoring Lakers and the capable Celtics met in the Finals did the ratings improve close to their previous levels.

Now offense has taken center-stage in the NBA Playoffs, and the ratings are at levels that they haven't been at for nearly eight years.

To the NHL's credit, they took measures to increase the speed of the games and the volume of goals scored after the lockout a few seasons ago. Am I suggesting that they make more changes to increase the goals scored and thus the TV ratings? Not at all, I am completely and unequivocally against changing the structure of a game just to increase TV ratings. One round of changes is enough.

But as I watched the game, several things started to dawn on me. I realized why NHL ratings have always been lower than those of the other sports.

First of all, it's a very regional sport. Hockey is very, very big in the North, Northwest and Northeast, but the farther south you go, the less interest there is. That's not the case with the three other big sports. Football is universally loved everywhere, as is baseball, and basketball is becoming more and more universally enjoyed each year. Sure, teams can be added in San Jose and Tampa Bay and Phoenix, but it will take a long time to infuse hockey into areas that typically experience temperatures in the 80's and 90's and rarely experience naturally occurring ice of any sort. People start to wear light jackets and pants in these places at about 70 degrees! Good luck getting those people to go to hockey games.

The other big reason is that the stars aren't always in the game. Out of a possible 60 minutes Sidney Crosby was only in the game for about 22 minutes. Henrik Zetterburg played for 24 minutes. I understand that these are pretty standard amounts of playing time for the top players, but I'm used to LeBron James playing for 45 of 48 minutes. I'm used to Tom Brady being on the field for over half the game as his offense methodically works itself down the field. I'm used to Alex Rodriguez playing defense for half of every inning and going up to bat every 2 or three innings. As shift changes typically occur as the cameras are away from the bench in hockey, its hard for casual fans to tell whether or not the player they're supposed to be watching is even out on the ice. If these are the players that they are supposed to be watching, they want to see a lot of them; they don't want to have to look for them every other minute or two just to lose them again in a few moments.

As much as I want hockey to elevate itself back to the levels of the other three big sports in America, it has several fundamental flaws that it must overcome, somehow. It has gotten off to a good start, but it must continue to build upon the success it has experienced this season.

Two great playoff seasons? Who knew?

The late months of spring have been very generous to sports fans in delivering an exceptional NBA playoff season filled with intrigue and excitement. There have been a bunch of plotlines that have interwoven and played off of one another to create the most enthralling second season that I can remember, which is basically the post-Michael era.

Already, as we lead up to Game One of the NBA Finals on Thursday, we have seen perhaps the closest seven-game series in the history of the playoffs between the #2 Boston Celtics and the #7 Chicago Bulls, which seemed like it had more overtime play than regulation; the relentless march through the first two rounds and subsequent fall of King James and his Cavaliers, the personification of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”; and several other series that either went six or the full seven games.

Little do most people know, however, that another great playoff season is taking place simultaneously with the NBA. A playoff season that already featured a match-up between its two best players, just as many close series going six or seven games as the NBA and a Finals rematch from last season filled with intrigue.

Of course, I'm speaking of the NHL. I must admit, I haven't watched a majority of the games in the NHL Playoffs. I've been catching the highlights every morning on SportsCenter. In general, I've never watched a lot of NHL. But I want to. It is something that I want to get hooked into.
But the NHL isn't helping me out at all, which is the underlying reason why a lot of people don't consider it one of the Big Four American sports. I can name a few of its biggest stars. I can tell you which teams are supposed to be good and which ones aren't. But outside of that, my hockey knowledge is pretty scarce.

Instead I'm getting hooked into the NBA and the MLB. What is the difference between these two leagues and the NHL? Marketing strategies. Think about it: How many times have you seen the puppet Kobe/LeBron commercial? How about the Shaq Scrabble commercial? Who can say they haven't seen a commercial with Derek Jeter?

When was the last time you saw a national advertising campaign with Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin portrayed by an inanimite object? Outside of the local Rahmani commercials, have you ever seen Pavel Datsyuk on a commercial? Evgeni Malkin? Ricky Nash? Ilya Kovalchuk? Teemu Selanne? Joe Thornton?

Have you ever even heard of these guys?

I'm sure if you asked casual sports fans to name the five best players in the NBA, they could give you a pretty reasonable list. Same for the NFL and, to a lesser extent, MLB. And a lot of them could even name the team they play for. But not the NHL.

The key to the NHL's success is the marketability of its biggest stars.

But here's where the NHL runs into a catch-22: In order to get these stars to shine a bit brighter in the night sky that is the sports landscape they must get a national TV deal. But in order to get a big TV deal, the stars need to be marketed more.

In other words, the NHL is going to have to take a short-term financial loss in order to orchestrate a advertising campaign to get these players exposed. The results may not be immediate, but if people know the players – especially the big ones – they are more likely to tune into the games. Even casual sports fans that I know tuned into the NBA playoffs this year because of the exposure that Kobe and LeBron received, and that was evident from the high ratings that they have raked in.

And when people start tuning into the NHL – after they find the Versus network – they will finally get a stable, big-time national deal.

Maybe then more people will enjoy two playoff seasons instead of just the one each spring.