from Mick Kern of Home Ice XM204,
A few bullet points:
- Biggest Star in League History is traded to Los Angeles
- L.A. media, thus much of the U.S. national media, suddenly awake to the fact they`ve had an NHL team for the past 21 years
- NHL benefits from the marketing of Gretzky
- speculators want to get in on the action, some with money (Disney), some without (McNall, Boots, etc…)
- NHL takes the easy expansion money, and suddenly grows from 21 teams to 30 teams in less than a decade
- former NBA executive Gary Bettman is hired as NHL Commissioner to oversee the new NHL, chiefly to land that ever-elusive big U.S. TV contract
- that contract never comes-to-pass, and the NHL is no longer the fourth sport in the U.S., as a split in the open-wheel racing community in the U.S. and Canada allows NASCAR to move up in popularity at an astonishing rate, becoming a marketing and television behemoth
Blame Wayne?
Oh, I don’t think so.
Blame the NHL hierarchy for failing to properly capitalize on the tremendous advantage Gretzky gave them.
Posted by Lyle Richardson from Charlottetown, PEI on 08/08 at 08:26 AM