So it's almost Thanksgiving. We have a good idea who will be playing for the national championship in college football (Oklahoma or Auburn and USC), we've watched an NFL season characterized by its' league parity, and we're enjoying an NBA that has had a complete makeover. College basketball, with great teams like Wake Forest, Kansas, and North Carolina, will be reinvigorated this season. But something feels like it's missing in the world of sports. Where's hockey?
Oh yeah, the NHL has been locked out since the collective bargaining agreement expired on Sept. 15. The owners and the players haven't met since Sept. 9 and, as the league keeps canceling games (the All-Star game was canceled three weeks ago), this season gets closer and closer to becoming the first season among the four major sports ever to be lost completely to a labor dispute.
The roots of the dispute are in, of course, overpaid players. Teams like the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers grossly overpay their players, creating huge debts for a league that can't afford to pay such exorbitant salaries. The average NHL player has a higher average salary than the average NFL player, who plays in the most profitable league in professional sports. Owners understand the need for a salary cap, but players refuse to compromise ... and here we are.
But if most of you are like me, you really haven't noticed. Don't feel bad though. The rest of America hasn't noticed either. In an Oct. 1-3 Zogby poll, 56 percent of America didn't know there was a lockout while only 6 percent said they would be interested in watching NHL play when it resumes.
Don't kid yourself by thinking that this is all a result of the lockout. Interest in the NHL has been absent for a while now. Now I understand that last year's Stanley Cup Finals featured Calgary and Tampa Bay, two teams with small fan bases who generate little national interest. But this series went seven games ... and ratings for the series were down 10 percent from last year.
Even worse was the 4.2 Nielsen rating for Game 7, broadcast on ABC. The series average ranking was 2.6.
In comparison, this year's PGA Championship drew a 4.9 for CBS without Tiger Woods playing. NBC drew a 4.6 for its' broadcast of NASCAR's Mountain Dew Southern 500 over Labor Day weekend. Hockey, a sport combining bruising hits and nail biting games, finds itself behind men playing golf and cars driving around a track.
So it's understandable why ABC's contract with the NHL over the last five years was worth only $600 million and split advertising profits between the league and the network, the same kind of contract offered to Arena Football. Consider that the NFL's contract split between four networks is worth $17.4 billion, while NBC's contract with NASCAR is worth $2.8 billion.
It seems the only time America bothers to watch hockey is when America is playing hockey. I mean Team America. No, not the little puppets from Trey Parker and Matt Stone's movie. I mean the Olympic team. The "Miracle on Ice," when the Americans beat the Soviet team in 1980, drew a 23.9 while the 2002 gold medal game between the U.S. and Canada drew a 10.7.
But why is there no carryover? Why don't people want to watch hockey regularly? Perhaps people only care because it's the Olympics. The same argument has been made for men's and women's soccer and women's basketball. But none of those sports have the history, tradition, or the revenue of the NHL.
The truth is hockey isn't the same league it was ten years ago, or even five years ago. Ten years ago, Mark Messier and the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup over the Vancouver Canucks. The stars of the day were legends like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Brett Hull. Even casual sports fans knew these guys. American markets in Dallas, Denver, and Florida were receiving franchises and having surprising success attracting fans.
Fast forward to now. The highest paid players in the NHL include Jaromir Jagr, Pavel Bure, Peter Forsberg, and Keith Tkachuk. All the foreign players with all their consonants that have infiltrated the NHL have alienated American kids who would rather watch Chris Moneymaker play poker. These are the same kids who sit through Sportscenter highlights of the Columbus Blue Jackets against the Nashville Predators rolling their eyes with boredom waiting to see the thirty second spot on the Phillies ... well, maybe that's just me.
The same kids have parents who don't let their kids play pee wee hockey. Can you blame them? How many families have the money to pay for sticks, pucks, helmets, pads, skates, jerseys, gloves, and ice fees and then find the time to drive their kids to the odd hours that ice rinks offer? I have friends who tell me they were practicing at 5:00 a.m ... in elementary school.
As fewer and fewer members of this generation and future generations grow up without hockey at younger ages, the league will continue to remain unpopular. It's obvious that the game simply doesn't sell, as demonstrated by the fact that "Miracle," the successful movie dramatizing the 1980 victory, focused almost entirely on the actors themselves and team relations rather than on the sport. That kind of focus was the same for movies like "The Mighty Ducks" trilogy. People aren't watching the sport and they aren't buying it either.
So what's next for the NHL? Most likely they'll have to reduce the number of teams and adopt smaller market economics. Players will have to accept a salary cap as ticket prices are reduced to bring back the already dwindling fan base.
Sadly, though, it's painfully obvious that the best days of this league are behind it.
