Yes.
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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Yes.
Sorry to the hockey fans for my comments ;)
Yeah, you could watch Australian Rules Football to your heart's content. And all the tractor pulls you want. I love the game of hockey, but it deserves what it has done to itself. Get rid of the helmets, drop the third-man-in rule, and let's play some real Boom Boom Geoffrion hockey.
It's a perfect example of what greed, pride, and stubborness can do. There's nothing more exciting than NHL Playoff hockey, it should be super-easy to sell, and these guys have just squandered millions of dollars and all the marketing momentum the game had for nothing.
Speedy,
I have always thought helmets hurt the game. But, if you have time, I'd be interested to know why you think helmets should be eliminated.
Hockey?? Don't know much about it, all I've heard is it is a "sport" watched by a great majority of some irrelevant and wuss country on Monday nights.
I would go even further,
1.European size ice surface. (todays players are too fast and too fit for yesterdays ice rink surface)
2.No helmets ( all boarding checks from behind,even a push,equals automatic penalty)
3.Automatic icing.
4.Goaltender pad sizing reduction.
4.Wooden sticks,no composite fancy smancy stuff.
5.Zero tolerance for hooking and holding.
Like I've said before: THIS is why unions are bad.
I don't understand the opposition to helmets.
Tom -- I was being a bit facetious -- I'm just nostalgic for the days of Yvan Cournoyer flying down the ice, and being able to recognize the players without trying to read the jerseys. But more seriously, I do think there is a lot of evidence that there are more injuries -- certainly more concussions -- since helmet use was mandated. When was it, late 70s, early 80s? I think it has actually encouraged more nasty stick work because of a false sense of safety. I guess my argument is equal parts nostalgia, style and safety. What are your thoughts on it?
You have my vote for commissioner.
well as they are seemingly NOT going to agree on anything contrary to reports of a salary cap agreement, I think the NHL is totally screwed.
Eventually, however, somone will pick up the slack. If you have a viable business model, Hockey can survive in the US...
I grew up a major hockey fan, but I have to say I enjoyed watching women's college softball games on ESPN and ESPN2 this year a lot more than I enjoyed watching their NHL coverage in seasons past. Of course, it's not that fun watching hockey when you have to try to find the puck on a TV screen that has the entire bottom strip constantly covered by scores and news of other sports. And ESPN's hockey announcers were never my favorites.
Hockey has to be one of those games that's more fun to play than watch. It's right there with soccer.
What killed hockey was the introduction of goons whose only talent is to start fights to break the other team's momentum.
This tactic was introduced by Punch Imlach when he coached the Buffalo Sabres after expansion.
The Sabres were terrible, so he used Tracy Pratt as a goon.
There were always fights in hockey, but it was only after expansion that fighting be came part of the game strategy.
Another thing that hurt hockey as a spectator sport was the switch from advancing the puck along the boards to taking it up the middle.
The author of this article misses a very critical point here. Pro hockey never "matured" from a cult sport at all -- the NHL simply gave the appearance that it had become popular on a national level by relocating and expanding into U.S. television markets with large populations but no real hockey fan support. In their NBA-oriented style of TV-based marketing of the 1990s, the NHL -- through former NBA executive Gary Bettman -- decided that a Phoenix market with 20,000 casual fans among 4 million people represented a more lucrative opportunity than a Winnipeg market with 500,000 die-hard fans among 600,000 people.
NHL execs should recall that Major League Baseball--which, besides being the national pastime, has always had a much broader fan base than pro hockey, along with a ubiquitous TV presence--didn't recover its pre-strike popularity until the McGwire-Sosa home run race in 1998.
And Weekly Standard writers and editors should note that Major League Baseball did nothing more than hitch its wagon to a steroid-enhanced home run race in order to recover its pre-strike popularity. When you consider the role that steroids, juiced-up baseballs, and a miniscule strike zone played in baseball's offensive explosion of the 1990s, the sport really only recovered its popularity by pushing itself across that thin line that separates "competitive sport" from "staged event."
If that's what it means to be popular on a national level here in the U.S., then I'll take the cult sport any day, thank you.
You should love curling, then.
This point has been made for a long time by Don Cherry, especially regarding face shields. We're stuck with helmets, however, because of the nature of the sport and the number of really hard things that a player's head can collide with - a flying puck, the rink boards or glass, other players' skate blades and the rock-hard ice playing surface.
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