Am I the only fan that's willing to ask more from the NHL?

It’s the NHL’s job as a league to promote the game and it’s up to each team to promote themselves within their region. There are some teams which do that much better than others. I hate to give credit, but Toews and Kane are minor celebrities in Chicago with the way they’re marketed there (based solely on the stuff I’ve seen watching Versus broadcasts Chicago feeds of their games.

I don’t disagree that the league should be telling more stories and more rivalries, but our commissioner learned at the heels of David Stern and that guy, as evil as he is, grew the game of basketball by elevating certain players to nationwide hero-worship status. I think that (combined with other factors) actually hurts basketball’s credibility.

The thing is that, anymore, it’s not really up to the league. Bettman doesn’t have the authority to tell NBC and Versus which games they’re going to pick up for national broadcast. The league isn’t telling the national media which figures they’re going to run on their promos, and the league can’t tell the press from both countries to stop paying so much attention to Crosby’s every sneeze and every hiccup.

I guarantee you that if you pumped Bettman full of enough truth serum to make him admit that his father was Gepetto, he’d probably tell you that he’d like nothing more than for everybody to be paying maximum attention to the war of words heating up between the Rangers and Flyers in preparation for HBO’s 24/7 series and this year’s Winter Classic.

Trust me on this, the NHL is not paying for Sidney Crosby billboards in Edmonton.

I think first, we should look at the differences between hockey and the other major sports. I saw a Buccigross column a couple weeks ago that canonized it properly, saying something to the effect of hockey is more of a team sport than any of the other major sports, which is why it’ll never achieve the success those other sports enjoy in America. This society values individual performance above success of the whole, and so more individual-focused sports such as football, baseball, and especially basketball will continue to resonate with the American psyche better than the idea of a 5-man or 3-man hockey unit ever will. I cannot speak to the national psyche of Canadians, so hopefully someone from that side of the border can provide some illustration there.

Which brings me to the second point. Gary Bettman. He used to be an NBA Senior VP, and so he came up immersed in that individual-focused aspect of sports and sports marketing. Then he came to the NHL and brought those ideas with him. This is how we’ve ended up with the league advertising schtick of “Come watch Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin beat the hell out of your small-market, low-budget team twice a year!” I really don’t think he “gets it” in terms of what makes hockey hockey, but he does understand how to put asses in the seats in American arenas. So there’s the rub: the exact things that make hockey the game it is are fundamentally inconsistent (in America) with advancing the ultimate goal of the league, namely to make money.

Finally, and this is unfair, but it is what it is, there are other biases that make hockey less appealing to the masses. I still run into people that complain it’s hard to find the puck while watching on TV. I make two counterpoints: first, have they watched a game in HD? No, well give that a shot. Second, you miss a lot of the action by only watching the puck. Hell, I’m guilty of this too, but it’s the truth and it takes a long time to really understand what’s going on in a hockey game, probably longer than it takes to get to a comparable understanding of what’s happening in a football or basketball game. Finally, a lot of overseas players are less marketable simply because they’re from overseas. Ovechkin’s a counterpoint, but he’s the exception rather than the rule, and I think much of his exposure is because the league (and Bettman, again, with the individual focus) wants to create a feud between him and Crosby. Datsyuk flew under the radar for a lot of years because of very little media exposure due to his relatively weak English. Nikolai Khabibulin’s name is hard to pronounce, and as lame as that is, it’s a turnoff for Joe Schmo who can’t remember a name with that many vowels in it.

As J.J. says above (and I was writing when he posted, so no reply fail), each market is responsible for advertising their own team. I disagree, though, that the NHL has nothing to do with national exposure. Sure, NBC is going to choose games that hit the biggest markets, and sure, the Wings are the biggest road draw in the league, but even though the league isn’t telling the national media who their promos are going to focus on, that doesn’t mean that they can’t showcase players from around the league. Simply by including stars from all the different teams, the NHL will basically force the media to sit up and say, “Oh shit, so-and-so is in the NHL’s promo reel, we should probably make sure somebody’s checking his highlights so we’re not missing out on a story!”

100%

I’m for ANYTHING that gets more people to watch hockey. ANYTHING – even marketing the shit out of “name that player”.

I saw an article done by a sportswriter from LA (I think) stating that at first, he thought he’d really miss the NBA, but not so much, because he went to a few hockey games, and all of a sudden – he openly, freely admitted that he likes hockey! Cool!, Awesome!, Good for you! Better for me (and us) because he’s just now finding out what I / we have known for some time – hockey is wonderful, great, awesome to watch and amazing to see live. Wonder why it took him this long – but if the dude is here to stay, I’m all for it.

You hate seeing the Sidney Crosby crap?, well so do I, but only because it’s not Nick Lidstrom.

Yes, I complain and bitch about the NBC announcers as much as anyone, but not any more than I complain about Brent Musberger. So what – if I hate it that much, I’ll turn on the Wings game on the internet and sync the sound to the DVR so I can listen to Ken Kal.

Marketing is one thing, injuries are another – I hate seeing that Sid the Kid is out again with concussion symptoms. That sucks. It sucks worse if you’re a Pens fan, but if you’re a hockey fan at all – it’s bad. He whines too much, but he’s good for the game – he’s got skills, and his pretty face (when Jimmy isn’t giving him a facewash) helps promote the game. He gets on Sportscenter (or SportsCentre – Hi Graham), and it’s good for the NHL that he does.

So promote it all you want, whatever way you want, in whatever form or fashion that you want. It’s all good. If I don’t like it, I have the power to not listen, change the channel or turn my eyes away from the billboard.