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They’re out every May, and they stick around through June You’ve seen them. You’ve heard them before. To call them negative would be an insult to cynicism.
They are American sportswriters, and they want you to know how much professional hockey pisses them right off.
I predicted before the NHL’s Stanley Cup conference finals that the media would demolish any Cup Final combination that didn’t include the Philadelphia Flyers. The other three options were a pair of small-market teams from sunny places, and a Cinderella team from Canada that was on ESPN about as often as wheelchair basketball this season.
The NHL season ends with the hoisting of the Cup. It began with the league facing the prospect of a work stoppage this fall, something that produced more childish glee among sports columnists than a press box buffet. Then came the Todd Bertuzzi incident, which seems like ancient history now but, back then, perked up the ears of the sports media attack dogs. And to say this was the wrong year to have Tampa and Calgary in the last games of the season would be an insult to understatements.
Sometimes these writers — many of them proud to boast no affinity for hockey — make cliché critiques, such as that fighting “doesn’t belong” in the sport, or that Olympic hockey is “the way the game should be played.” Other times, it’s poor television ratings. This year, the message they’re sending is: “Hockey is no longer a major league sport in America.”
It came from little columnists, like some guy named Andrew Harley of the Vail Times: “I went out to try and find someone who could tell me what the story is with this year`s Stanley Cup Finals, and returned with a lot of question marks and a feeling of general disappointment passed on by high-country hockey folk.”
It came from Jon Saraceno, the biggest columnist in the most popular paper in America, USA Today: “From the public`s point of view, Tampa Bay-Calgary is the World Series equivalent of the Devil Rays vs. the Expos, the NBA`s June version of the Magic against the Raptors. As the National Hockey League continues to skate down the slippery slope of decreasing interest and declining TV revenues, the hockey gods continue to pile on.”
It came from many, many, many more, but I hit my breaking point when Thomas Boswell took his shots in The Washington Post this week.
Boswell, who has gone from journalistic visionary to old coot faster than you can say “Walter Cronkite,” writes under the headline: “NHL On Path For Major Collapse.” The purpose of the column was to rehash every doom and gloom prediction, ratings ridicule, and ill-informed hockey stereotype uttered or written for the last two decades. He actually writes, “If the Weather Channel had a power outage, its ratings would still crush the NHL’s numbers.” I’m guessing this is a joke, but I’m sure a few readers didn’t, considering it isn’t funny. For the record, The Weather Channel’s “StormStories” reality show averaged a 0.4 rating last year; the NHL rated a 0.7 until the conference finals this year.
Boswell is just another sports wonk taking his swing at the hockey piñata, and then walking away smugly even though the candy never poured out of its belly. These writers are going to croon the same old songs about the sport until even the players are singing it.
What they need are some talking points.
And since Gary Bettman can’t even market a black, physically dominant, goal-scoring, MVP-candidate, personable team captain to the general public, allow me:
Q. Is it true that no one is watching the Stanley Cup Finals this season?
A. The biggest lie in all of these columns. It’s embarrassing to see the way these people twist the facts.
The NHL is, for better or for worse, a North American sport. The NBA and MLB will be down to one Canadian team by next season. The NFL wouldn’t dare expand to Canada, because it knows its base doesn’t want Winnipeg/Cincinnati on the dish every Sunday.
So to measure NHL viewership, you can’t just take the numbers from American television. It’s not fair. That’s ignoring six extremely strong fan bases.
Games 3 and 4 of the Cup Finals have been widely reported as disasters. On ABC, Game 3 drew a 2.2 rating, and Game 4 was up to a 2.8. A single ratings point represents 1% of the 105.5 million television households in the United States, or 1,055,000 American households. So Game 3 had 2,321,000 viewers and Game 4 had 2,954,000 viewers.
Now, add in the Canadian numbers. Game 3’s audience jumps to 5,456,000 and Game 4 jumps to 7,404,000, which would have ranked it ahead of “60 Minutes” last week (6,980,000 households).
Now, you could blow off these facts by saying the American ratings still suck or that Canadian fans don’t factor into the “hockey is dead” motif. But none of these columnists were dismissing fans Nord of da Border when the ratings from Toronto didn’t count for either of their World Series appearances; in fact, sportswriters used it as a crutch when ratings dropped dramatically in 1992 and 1993 for the baseball postseason.
Hockey gets no such break.
Q. Is it true that “casual” fans would watch more hockey if there wasn’t any fighting or defense or foreign players or goalies or ice?
A. Yes. And also if there were monster trucks, Kid Rock concerts, and Jessica Alba on a stripper pole in the middle of the face-off circle.
Next.
Q. Is hockey really the fourth most-popular sport in America?
A. No. But then yes. But also maybe.
The National Hockey League is less popular than the National Football League, and less popular than Major League Baseball. Which brings us to the National Basketball Association.
Ratings-wise, it’s a no-contest. Hoops are a slam-dunk. But that’s because it has a better demographic appeal, attracting minority viewers that have not only never watched hockey; some of them have never seen a frozen pond before.
Basketball is also a telegenic sport when compared to hockey. This is something that will change in the next decade, as HDTV and better digital camera technology allows hockey games to be seen on TV like they’re seen in the arena.
Speaking of the arena, there are 13 cities that house both NHL and NBA teams. Let’s cross out LA and N.Y. from this comparison, because one has two hockey teams and one has two basketball teams. That leaves us with 12 multi-sport cities or states.
The Pistons drew more fans than the Red Wings in Detroit this season, but the Wings actually filled the building more (100.1% capacity to 96.4% for the Pistons).
But what about places that aren’t called “Hockeytown, USA?” The NHL enjoyed an advantage in Philadelphia (19,375-19,222), Minnesota (18,531-17,635), Denver (18,007-17,596), Boston (86.2% capacity to 82.7%, although the Celtics drew more fans), Miami (15,936-15,207), New Jersey (15,083-14,952) and Atlanta (15,127-13,798). And it was damn close in Phoenix, with the horrible Coyotes chasing the Suns by less than 1,000 fans per game. (The NBA rules in Dallas, Chicago, Washington and Phoenix.)
So overall, in the towns with one hockey team and one hoops team, the rink outdraws the court in 8 out of 12.
In those cities, the NHL is the second or third most popular sport.
Q. Does hockey need another Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky to survive?
A. Hopefully not, because there will never be another of either. Defensive systems and goaltenders have evolved to the point were the league needs to seek legislation to reduce their effectiveness. Even if another dominating offensive star takes over the league, he’ll either be a European or on some small market team; hence, the NHL wouldn’t know the first way to market him. I shudder to think what the league would do today if its top two stars were in Edmonton and Pittsburgh like they were in the 1980s. To say Bettman’s NHL has done a poor job marketing its product would be an insult to the Kerry campaign.
Q. Is the NBC deal an indication that the league is dying?
A. It’s been interpreted that the NBC TV deal somehow puts the NHL on the same level as Arena Football. When you consider how hockey’s been maligned while Arena Ball has been propped up, it’s amazing we’ll have hockey on broadcast TV at all.
Anyone who thinks this NBC deal is a bad move for the NHL should volunteer their organs to medical science. The league just went from a rudderless ship at ABC to a luxury cruise liner. It’s gone from the network of Jim Belushi and people getting hit in the crotch on videotape to the network of “ER” and “Law and Order.”
ABC’s primetime ratings were down 10% this May sweeps from last year. It trailed Fox by almost a ratings point. NBC was second to CBS in overall viewership, but won key adults 25-54 and adults 18-49 demographics. And whom do you think hockey will be pitched to?
Bottom line: NBC can sell its sports properties. Or am I the only one hearing the gripes from the NBA about the way ABC’s promoted basketball this season?
Q. Are hockey fans dreading the potential labor stoppage next season?
A. Well, we’re not throwing Tupperware parties over it. But as long as it’s brief, we’ll manage.
Boswell hammered home the point that baseball suffered after its labor strife. “Just because baseball is in excellent health after a fundamental breach of trust with its customers, that should not serve as some sort of subliminal message to hockey`s owners and players,” he writes.
This is where Boswell, and so many of his ilk, are misguided. There is no violation of trust in the NHL’s case. In fact, management is asking for the fans’ trust that this work stoppage will produce a better product in the end by curbing the insane inflation of player salaries and handcuffing the owners who can’t help but pay them.
Hockey fans aren’t going to pitch a fit like baseball fans. No one is raping our childhood. This is a necessary correction. They aren’t going to cancel the Stanley Cup Finals unless the entire regular season’s been cancelled already.
They only way hockey fans come away from this feeling betrayed is if the lockout doesn’t achieve the majority of its objectives, if the sport is off the ice for more than a season, or if it comes back with an overtime shootout and goalie pads the size of tampons.
Q. Finally, does anyone in America care about hockey?
A. The irony of most of these columns is that hockey is both a sport that “survives off the adoration of a relatively small hardcore” (Thomas Boswell), yet at the same time a labor stoppage may cause hockey “to lose it’s status alongside the NFL, MLB and NBA as a major professional team sport.” (T. Bos, again.)
So which is it? Is hockey a regional sport with limited appeal to a small collection of puckheads? Or is a major league sport?
Let’s look at the facts:
* The NHL has teams in 23 American markets, with two teams in New York. All but two of them average more than 13,000 fans for 41 home games; seventeen of them average more than 15,000. If 21 cities can put between 13,000-20,000 fans per home game in their arenas, despite having the most expense tickets in sports, I’d say that’s a major league sport.
* Minor league hockey is all around the country, in leagues like the AHL and ECHL. In the AHL this season, teams in Houston and San Antonio outdrew teams in Albany and Toronto. The ECHL has successful franchises in such hockey hotbeds as San Diego, South Carolina and Las Vegas. The winner of the league’s national title this season hailed from Idaho, which embraced the team in an unforgettable way.
All of this minor league success tells me that it’s more about how the sport is marketed than it is about the appeal of the sport itself. But I’ve read few columnists informed enough on that subject to comment.
So the answer is yes, Americans do care about hockey.
It’s just that their newspaper columnists don’t.
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Published on the web since 1997, "The Jester`s Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.
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