Hockey... The Almost Forgotten Sport

The Stanley Cup Playoffs started this last weekend and to this point it has been a very exciting week.  The Penguins and Flyers are in a very heated battle in which the final favorite Penguins are down 3-1.  The Rangers are tied with Ottawa and Vancouver fought off elimination on Wednesday night.  The playoffs have a way of drawing even non fans to the sport because the play is so high tempo and personal.  Why can't the regular season muster even a little of that excitement?

The biggest problem isn't the games.  Hockey is an amazing sport that requires a lot of skill to play and only a little understanding to enjoy.  Hockey has the worst marketing people in the world working for them, they have very limited exposure during the regular season and there schedules are chaotic for fans to follow.  I think that if Gary Bettman could change at least one of these downfalls then he would see his sport's popularity rise.

The only reason I knew the playoffs were starting in the NHL this year was because of the amount of local sports radio I listen to along with the insane amount of SportsCenter that I watch.  I didn't see one commercial promoting the upcoming games or anything.  The people in charge of marketing for the NHL have to be fired because they received no press and created no buzz prior to or during the the greatest professional championship on the planet.  The NHL used to get it's name out there through endorsement products, but lately  it is rare that you can see anything hockey outside of the arenas that they play in.  The NHL needs to adopt a strategy the spans several networks and multiple medias in order to promote and expand their game.

When and where is hockey on TV these days.  The NHL has 1 nationally televised game a week.  1!  It is played on NBC in the late morning to early afternoon.  Football gets at least 6 games televised a week and  5 of them happen on the same day.  Football only plays on 2 days of the week.  Hockey plays everyday and they can only manage 1 game a week on TV in a lousy time slot that isn't even promoted well.  They show a lot of the same teams playing each other because they want to play the best teams during that time in order to impress potential fans with there product.  It is a bad plan for the smaller markets because they don't get much exposure and it's bad for the sport because if you don't like the Penguins, Rangers, Red Wings, or Bruins then you have no need or desire to watch that one game a week.

Scheduling in the NHL follows the basketball plan.  They play a different team every night that they play and with a season that is as long as the NHL's there is very little importance that can be put on one game.  That is why I feel that hockey should switch to the baseball strategy of scheduling.  Each individual game would still lack importance due to the long season, but loosing 2 in a row would mean loosing a series which in baseball is the bigger issue.  So, while the individual game would remain the same in principal, the way that they are clumped together adds importance to them as a whole in the regular season.  Also, it would add a sense of urgency to games against teams that you know would only face once a year in a series format verses 3 or 4 games spread out throughout a season.

The NHL is hurting and it isn't doing anything at the moment to help itself.  They have major obstacles preventing themselves from increasing their popularity.  Gary Bettman would be wise to make a few changes  in order to improve his sports standing in this country.  If he doesn't then I'm afraid that next year I won't even hear about hockey on the sports networks.