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The Game Is Great Again
by Paul on 05/08/08 at 11:56 AM ET
Comments (2)
from Adam Thompson of the Wall Street Journal,
People are starting to watch again, and they should be. The game is as fast and fun as it’s been in years, and this year’s playoffs have made good use of its young stars. Names like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin continue to inch into crossover territory with each impossible deke, thread-the-needle pass and goal....
The NHL still has a laundry list of problems, from its placement on the still-obscure Versus to its continuing inability to penetrate much of the Sun Belt. Its outdoor game in Buffalo between the Penguins and Sabres lived up to the hype – but the burden remains for the league to prove that wasn’t a one-off success.
The league and union ought to swallow their pride, retreat from a few markets that have consistently failed to gain traction – the NHL remains an afterthought in Nashville and South Florida – and, for the love of all things decent, permanently table any talk of further expansion to hockey hinterlands like Kansas City and Las Vegas. A game already taking positive steps would look even better with a more concentrated talent pool free of talent-poor fourth-liners.
All that said, the present game looks great. With Mr. Cherry shouting this to Americans at the top of his lungs, maybe a few more will notice.
Filed in: NHL Teams, NHL Talk | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
He’s very right about tabling Las Vegas as a potential NHL market in spite of the Mega-holy-crap-that’s-a-lot-of-moolah from AEG and Jerry Bruckheimer.
The local ECHL team, the Las Vegas Wranglers are on a similar tear like the Wings. They’re the first team in the twenty-year existence of the ECHL to record three consecutive 50-win seasons and therefore three consecutive 100-point seasons. They’re the first ECHL franchise to make the playoffs in each of their first five years of existence.
And yet, they play in an arena that seats 7,800 and average attendance is about 68%-75% full. Now, while that may sound like a pretty good set of numbers (better than breaking even), those figures carry into the playoffs as well. The Wranglers have advanced to the National Conference Finals and we have not sold out a single home game this playoff year. Mind you, tickets are like anywhere from $22.00 to about $50.00 for seats right up to the glass. Tremendous value and they can’t sell out. Unbelievable.
Which makes me sad because as a Red Wings fan, I see a striking parallel with the way the Wranglers are run: they’re good solid hockey players with tremendous character. They don’t play cheapshot hockey. When the whistles are blown, they’re disciplined enough to skate away from potential skirmishes that may result in unnecessary roughing penalties. They play damn near Babcock-style bulldog hockey and happily pay the price if it means getting the goal. Most of all, they love the game to pieces.
While that sounds all good and pretty, it doesn’t translate very into potential revenues the NHL expects from an NHL team. We are a very dedicated but extraordinarily small group of hockey fans in this town. At the most, I hazard to guess that there’s about 6,000 truly dedicated hockey fans. That’s not going to work in this town if the NHL keeps looking at Las Vegas with googly eyes. Not even the preseason games between the Kings and the Slides could sell out the Wranglers arena. This year in September, it’ll be the Ducks and the Sharks. Even that game isn’t sold out.
In short, I really wish the NHL would look back up north to Canada if they want to expand the league or move stagnant franchises. Pushing the brand in markets not designed for the game is driving the quality of the NHL into the ground.
Posted by SYF from Las Vegas, NV on 05/09/08 at 01:59 AM ET
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Whew! For a minute there I thought the Preds just might be getting some respect. I knew it couldn’t be true. I really trust the WSJ.
Posted by PredNeck from Hicktown on 05/08/08 at 02:11 PM ET