Posted on 06/11/2005 9:20:58 AM PDT by quidnunc
The National Hockey League's long march to irrelevance continues apace. Last week, cable-sports king ESPN broke off negotiations with NHL execs and said it will move to schedule alternate programming for next season. This came just days after the network announced it would not exercise its $60-million option to claim broadcast rights if and when the 2005-2006 campaign gets underway. "We really had no choice," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN's executive VP for programming and production. "We're not going to be held hostage like we were last season."
The NHL, you see, has never been very good to ESPN. Leave aside, for a moment, pro hockey's ongoing labor spat, which cost the league its 2004-2005 season. The roots of the NHL-ESPN partnership date back to the network's founding in 1979. ESPN briefly held the cable broadcast rights to NHL contests during the 1980s — until the league dumped ESPN in 1988 and chose to go with Sports Channel instead. At the time, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said sticking with ESPN would've been "better for the game." "Sure, we got more money from Sports Channel," the Great One wrote in his 1990 autobiography, "but how much did we lose in exposure?"
Good point, and one that NHL suits quickly took note of. ESPN regained the cable broadcast rights to NHL action in 1992. This time, the network's choice proved felicitous. Hockey's popularity skyrocketed following the New York Rangers' gripping Stanley Cup run in 1994. Suddenly, everybody wanted a piece of "the coolest game on earth." But over the past several years, the talent pool has been diluted by near-constant league expansion, scoring has plunged, the games have gotten slow and boring, and TV ratings have sunk. The heady days of the mid 1990s seem a distant memory.
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(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
The push for helemts began when Bill Masterton of the Minnesota North Stars died after he fell and struck the back of his head on the ice during a home game with the Oakland Seals in 1968. Helmets finally became mandatory in 1979, but the NHL had its biggest surge in popularity in the 80's, so I don't think that brain crates have much to do with the present "troubles".
Bonus trivia: Andy Brown of the Penguins was the last goalie to play without a mask, against the Atlanta Flames in 1974.
Hockey is like soccer and women's basketball. As much as the sport media try to make us care about it, we just don't. It's a niche sport.
I used to love to watch Australian Rules Football on Saturday mornings on ESPN. Essendon Bombers!!!
As for the NHL, I think they're little boomlet in the mid-90's is one of the reasons they're going down the tubes now. Owners got carried away on salaries for players and also got greedy on expansion. They so saturated the market with mediocre teams just to get the expansion fees that the talent level was diluted. If they ever do get a salary cap, the first thing they need to do is fold some of the franchises they started up in the last 10 or so years. I just don't see hockey thriving in Nashville or Carolina, etc. once the initial novelty wears off.
I love Australian Rules Football.Those guys are tremendous athletes. Maybe the best in the world.
Hockey is at it's best when each side is down a man. It's wide open skating at high speed.
Keep the helmets. None of the skaters from the pre-helmet day seem to be doing very well. Addled brains and a missing life shouldn't be a an off shoot of pro hockey.
The last exciting hockey game I've seen was 25 years ago in Lake Placid, New York.
6. Take out the center line and move the blue lines out another 5 feet.
"I'm Hurling for Curling."
Tonight on the Ocho, world Dodgeball championship.
Actually I think ESPN telling the NHL to take a hike may have helped bring to 2 sides closer. Now they know that their $$$pie of even smaller. I suspect that just as the baseball strike killed baseball in Montreal and severly damaged it in Toronto the NHL strike will kill pro hockey in a few US cities.
Of course, it's not that fun watching hockey when you have to try to find the puck on a TV screen
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HDTV will save hockey.
Over expansion has wrecked all pro sports. It has diluted the product.
Baseball: Contract 3 teams
Basketball:4 teams
Hockey 4 teams
Football 2 teams
I've been under the impression that hockey was popular primarily in the NE US(this according to my Dad/formerly of BuffaloNY).When it was announced TB would get a franchise,i assumed it would flop just like soccer.Most of the hockey fans i know here in Tampa Bay are northern transplants whose enthusiasm borders on fanatical.I work with a few.They don't just attend games,but they sink massive amts of $$$$ into autographed sticks,pucks,jerseys,trading cards,.....
ESPN couldn't cover hockey for jack#%it anyway. That's why when the same game is on ESPN and CBC, 1/2 of Michigan watches CBC instead.
Dump the networks and go CBC and local. They know how to cover the game. Fox Sports Detroit does a great job with Ken and Mickey.
Over expansion has wrecked all pro sports. It has diluted the product.
Baseball: Contract 3 teams
Basketball:4 teams
Hockey 4 teams
Football 2 teams
Baseball? Try remove 12 teams! Eliminate inteleague play and playoffs. If 162 games is not enough to determine a league's rep to the World Series, how many are?
Basketball? No contraction, just raise the hoop two feet!
Hockey? Go back to about 16 teams, and go back to a forty game regular season with MAYBE four playoff teams.
Football? No more use of hands by o-linemen, offensive holding 15 yards. No two-tiered facemask running into the kicker penalty... automatic 15 yards. Modifications of most "judgement of intent calls" into "judgement of action" calls. Stick with the 32 teams for now.
Agreed. While I still like hockey, I like the 1980's style hockey better than today's game. More hitting. More scoring. More fights.
Hockey's biggest strength is its tradition.
I still don't understand Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta, and a 2nd team in Florida. No offense to the fans there, but those aren't massive hockey markets, especially compared to Winnepeg.
Or Hamilton.
Can somebody explain Women's Curling? Why do women need a separate league? Shouldn't women be able to compete in men's curling. It's almost like having a Women's Chess competition.
The Jets would moved from Winnipeg from Phoenix even if there were zero hockey fans in Phoenix -- because no matter how you slice it, a metropolitan area of 4 million people will always represent a larger potential television market than one of 600,000 people. The lure of lucrative television contracts literally infected the National Hockey League in the 1990s. An NHL franchise might have been worth $60 million in Winnipeg, based on the economics of the NHL at the time (in which gate revenue and local advertising represented the largest components of a team's revenue). But someone who thought he might be able to generate a lot more television revenue in Phoenix went out and paid $80 million for that $60 million franchise -- in the hopes that it would be worth $100 million a few years down the road.
Well, guess what -- the television contracts are gone, and now that Phoenix franchise is probably worth no more than $40 million or so. How ironic will it be when someone pays $40 million for the Coyotes and turns it into a $60 million franchise by moving them back to Winnipeg?
I just got back from playing hockey on inline skates for two hours in 90+ degree heat here. I'll bet you can't find five "die-hard" football fans in the U.S. who would do something like that (including flag football) on a summer afternoon! ;-)
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