The NHL has always wanted
to consider itself one of the “Big Four” major sports leagues in America, with
fat contracts, big business, high profiles and millions of obsessive, doting
fans. Together with the NFL, NBA, and MLB, they are the grand slam of the
professional sports market.
This,
however, is a serious delusion that can’t continue. The NHL is not nor has it
ever been a major sport in America, and it never will be anytime soon. If it
truly thinks that it is somehow part and parcel of some great, opulent
professional sports family, then it’s more like that easily ignorable cousin who
never gets any presents on his birthday, than like the other darling children
who get front-page headlines if they so much as sneeze.
For ground level, realistic example of this, hockey and basketball fans across the continent are currently tabulating votes for their respective all-star games. As of this writing, the #1 hockey player with the most votes of anyone is Martin Brodeur, with 97,000. That’s not too bad, until you realize that the #1 vote getter for the NBA is Vince Carter, who has over 1.1 million. As if to hammer the point home and make the discrepancy truly insulting, ESPN has televised more games of the dismal Cleveland Cavaliers than they have the Philadelphia Flyers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Atlanta Thrashers, Detroit Red Wings, Vancouver Canucks, and Los Angeles Kings (the six NHL division leaders) COMBINED. Lebron James has a 100 million dollar endorsement contract, the cover of countless magazines, and has his every moved scientifically scrutinized. Meanwhile, Sydney Crosby, the 16-year old hockey equivalent of Lebron, is………what’s that? Never heard of Sydney Crosby? Exactly.
This conscious negligence of hockey is prevalent everywhere else as well—in some cases, even more so. The annual World Junior Hockey Championships (featuring Sydney Crosby), a tournament that USA is actually heavily favoured to win this year, doesn’t exist in America. There is no mention of it anywhere on any news outlet in the lower 48. Conversely, March Madness and the New Years Bowl games build so much tension you think the country was in the grips of a civil war. Figure skating, child beauty pageants and monster truck rallies have larger audiences than hockey. Sometimes it has to fight the World Cup of Poker and 5-pin bowling for TV rights. Yet it acts as if it has the money and the influence to command high profiles and massive salaries. The NHL is living well beyond its means, and then it wonders why so many teams are in financial trouble now.
So why doesn’t America like hockey? Arguably, it is the most exciting sport in the world. A sport with relatively few stoppages, the play is always moving at high speeds, it has the violence of football and the playmaking of basketball. What’s so wrong about it? Well, actually, it has nothing to do with the game itself, and the NHL’s desperate attempts to improve the quality of play or market it differently have completely missed the point. Nothing is wrong with hockey. What’s wrong is the culture of America.
America does not have any interest in things that aren't American. Hence its reluctance (unwillingness? uncaringness?) to engage readily in any of the grander, more international sports like soccer or rugby. What are the most popular sports in America? Baseball, an American creation overwhelmingly dominated by Americans; NFL football, an American creation overwhelmingly dominated by Americans; Basketball, a Canadian creation however he was an American school teacher at the time, but that’s not too important so long as the game remains overwhelmingly dominated by Americans; NASCAR, a sport created by and overwhelmingly dominated by Americans. Other non-team sports like golf and tennis are popular in America, but only when Americans are dominating them. There’re also things like the America’s Cup, which has declined in popularity the last couple of years, ever since America stopped winning it (but it has acquired renewed interest abroad).
Part of the reasoning behind this is that America, which had no real (industrialized) culture to speak of, had to manufacture its culture through immigration and assimilation rather than let it develop naturally through history like other nations have, hence entrusting Americans with the need to justify it to an almost rabid extent. Conversely, the end product of having such a large landmass literally feed on itself for cultural sustenance has created, in effect, an extremely xenophobic attitude towards foreign ideas. In Europe you can travel through 14 countries and 10 different languages on one tank of gas. You can't do that in America. Hence, there's no real necessity to learn (much less tolerate) other people's ways or viewpoints, when there really are no such viewpoints near you. Where the hell is someone from Nebraska going to learn another culture's values? Americans are the most culturally sheltered people in the world.
This fits in with the alienation of hockey, a sport that, among the Big Four, is by far the most international. 24 countries are represented, with over third of the talent coming from outside North America. Americans, grown and raised exclusively in an American cultural bubble, are not going to accept a foreign game played by foreign people. They are only going to cling to the things they know and understand: Americans excelling at American things, playing American sports. Going to American colleges and eating American food while watching American movies featuring Americans doing American things in the most American Way possible. So when something else--say hockey--comes around, it's not that they don’t like it insomuch as they just don't care. There's no cultural connection there. Moreover, there is an underlying philosophy in America to reject anything that's not American. This is compounded by the need to feel threatened when confronted by uncomfortably un-American things (there are oodles of examples of this, especially in industry, commerce, and politics).
Hockey? Hockey makes sense to Michigan and Minnesota and all the northern states--i.e: the places that actually have a connection to it, aided by their exposure to the cultural runoff of Canadian values. But putting hockey any further south than that makes as much sense as putting a NASCAR track in Vancouver or hosting the NCAA basketball tournament in Edmonton. Or an Aussie Rules Football championship in the Louisiana Superdome.
Maybe what the NHL should be doing instead is stop bending over backwards trying to make new fans, and instead focus on retaining the ones they’ve got. Because trying to compete in a hostile market is obviously not working, and Canadians are becoming increasingly impatient with a league that only wants to appeal to affluent Americans who refuse to get with the program.