The NHL: The Red-Headed Stepchild of Professional Sports
In 1980, Lake Placid, N.Y. saw possibly the most influential moment in sports history. We all know the story. The men’s U.S. ice hockey team defeated the Soviet Union at the Winter Olympic Games. The victory for the U.S. unified a country, helped bring an end to the Cold War and told the greatest underdog story of all time. But that wasn’t enough to turn a country of national-pastiming, slam-dunking, end-zone-celebrating fans to the ice rink. Once the fervor of the victory had died down, the players and their sport were mostly forgotten, only to be seen on the occasional highlight reel.
And that’s what happens to most underdogs. Success is never expected, and if achieved, it’s fleeting or even downplayed. Any bandwagon jumpers fall off as soon as next season comes around. But there are a proud few who know what it’s like to always be the underdog hockey fans.
It’s no secret the National Hockey League is at the bottom of the list when it comes to popularity of team sports in the United States. In a land where football is king, and baseball and basketball sit comfortably, the NHL is often treated as the jester an enjoyable pastime, never to be taken too seriously. But the dark horse of the NHL may be pulling toward the front of the pack, leaving behind a history of general apathy and a few failed attempts to improve the game as it surges ahead into the future.
Hockey The Other White Sport
The reason men enjoy sports like basketball and football is because it’s just constant scoring, mindless entertainment, said Nichole Clark, from Sandy, Utah, who has been a hockey fan since high school. But hockey is more impressive. There’s suspense. And when they score, it means a lot.
But more than just the immense talent required to get that three inch piece of vulcanized rubber behind the goalie, hockey elicits a little bit more from its fans.
“There’s a certain amount of analyzation and focus required with hockey. There are a lot more nuances, so you have to pay attention in order to appreciate it,” Clark said. “But when I don’t want to think, I turn on a football game.”
Clark, like many others, realizes hockey has everything any sports fan could want. It’s a perfect blend of power and finesse. It’s a game of speed, strategy and precision. They battle for the oldest (and arguably most coveted) professional sports trophy in North America the Stanley Cup. There are teams in nearly every major city. Not only that, the NHL isn’t riddled with the steroid allegations, drug rings, arrests, dog fights et cetera that seem to be a frequent occurrence in the other major sports. But for some reason, that’s not enough.
“People don’t give it a chance, said Ed Andrews, season ticket holder with the Carolina Hurricanes. “Lots of people don’t know why they don’t like hockey; they just don’t like it.”
It could be because there’s little motivation for a sports fan to put forth the effort and make the switch to hockey. It’s easy to be a football or baseball fan. No one will question your sportshood when you watch the Superbowl or the World Series, rattling off stats about Brett Favre or that great Satan, the New York Yankees.
But try bringing up Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard or Wayne Gretzky around the water cooler. For some reason, knowing why the Montreal Canadians are called the Habs, or how long the New York Rangers went between league championships, or the greatness of the Edmonton Oilers dynasty in the late 80s is, oddly, less than impressive. This gives little incentive to branch out and make that exploration into a new sport. But there’s something about the sights and sounds of the ice actually experiencing a game that can get people hooked.
Sometimes if it’s your first time, it’s hard to get into it, Andrews said. “But typically, if I take people who have never been, within two or three games they’ll start buying their own tickets.”
Andrews love affair with the sport started when the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina. He attended the Hurricanes first home game against the Pittsburg Penguins, and has been cheering them on ever since.
“I work through the weekends to free up time and money for the games”, Andrews said, “even making trips out to Detroit and Philadelphia to support the Hurricanes.”
If It Ain’t Broke
Every NHL teams has fans like Andrews loyal, devoted fans, committed to the cause but even so, overall attendance in the NHL has waned in recent years. Over half the NHL teams saw a decrease in average attendance from 2001 to 2004. And the overall average attendance across the NHL was down in both the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 seasons.
During all of this, the NHL went through major changes. Hoping to increase scoring and bring in more fans, the NHL instituted several new rules expanding the offensive zones, getting rid of the two-line pass, stricter penalties. They reworked overtime, ties and points. They wanted to change the perception of the game by changing the rules. But how much change have teams actually seen from those rule changes?
“Absolutely zero”, said Adrian Denny, director of broadcasting, media and community relations for the minor league Utah Grizzlies. “The focus for the Grizzlies, like many minor league teams, isn’t so much on harvesting fans as it is just providing an evening out for the family.”
“The marketing entertainment first and hockey second,” Denny said. “We’ve got a great core of hockey fans here, and that’s outstanding. But we just keep a good product on the ice and keep entertaining the local community.”
But that doesn’t mean the Grizzlies don’t still face the same problems of trying to bring in more hockey fans. They know the more fans they have, the more tickets they sell. But it wasn’t the rules that were keeping people away from hockey.
“The feedback I get is it’s not a good TV sport,” Denny said. “You look at NHL arenas and they’re averaging the same attendance as NBA teams, so the real difference is television.”
Some people have a hard time following the puck as it flies around on the ice. The NHL, hoping to appeal to the eyes-cannot-move-fast-enough crowd, tried to remedy the situation. The late 90s saw the infamous Fox Trax or the “glow puck” where an electronic device was installed inside the puck so it glowed on the television screen to help viewers follow the puck’s movement on the ice.
It didn’t go over too well.
“What can be said that hasn’t already been said about the little blue electronic nimbus that rolls around the boards flickering like a flashlight with loose batteries and criss-crosses the ice leaving a stain of disappearing ink leaking behind it?” said Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif in their book “The Death of Hockey or: How a Bunch of Guys with Too Much Money and Too Little Sense are Killing the Greatest Game on Earth.” It’s distracting, it’s hypnotic, it’s infuriating most of all it’s insulting, because what it really is this: Screw all the fans in the cities where they know and love hockey So the game is dumbed down about as far as it can go, short of having a representative from the NHL or Fox actually standing in the living room, continuously indicating where the puck is by using his finger to point to it on the screen.”
Fox Trax was last seen in 1998, but many people expect the development and popularity of high-definition television will help remedy the difficulty associated with following the puck.
Out With the Old, In With the New
Learning from the past, most organizations are done trying to convert fans to hockey. Theyć± e done adapting the game they love to appeal to a crowd that probably won’t change. Hockey fans aren’t going to be found in ballparks or stadiums. Few, if any, are going to want to convert their season tickets from the court to the ice. That’s why most hockey teams aren’t looking for their fans amongst the Cheeseheads of Wisconsin.
The heavily involved with youth hockey. That’s the target market of the NHL, said Scott Storkan, manager of hockey development for the Phoenix Coyotes. We try to connect with kids that play hockey because they are, obviously, huge hockey fans. The older crowd is pretty set in their ways. And a lot of them complain because it’s hard to pronounce most of the players names.
For the Coyotes and the rest of the NHL, less emphasis is placed on turning football, baseball or basketball fans into hockey fans. Instead, they’re focusing their efforts on the unadulterated minds of youth. They’re promoting youth hockey leagues and clinics, and turning kids into hockey fans before their lives can be ruined by those sports not played on ice.
“The league is going to be a lot healthier within the next 10 years,” Storkan said.” As bad as it was, the lockout was important. We’ve created a more exciting, open game.”
When the players came back for the 2005-2006 season, it was the start of the new NHL. The focus switched to the future headliners players like Sydney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin and technology. The NHL realized they weren’t going to change the perception of hockey by changing the rules.
And it seems to be working.
The past two seasons since the lockout have seen a huge increase in average number of fans at games especially in Carolina, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Calgary, Nashville and Tampa Bay, who have all seen average attendance per game increase by at least 1,000. An emphasis has been placed on the future of the NHL, and as homegrown talent is developed, the annual NHL draft will have fewer vowel-less last names called out, and more American players at the top.
And the NHL is working hard off the ice and away from the arenas, incorporating technology and making fans a bigger part of the league. The NHL features podcasts and fan blogs, as well as up-to-the-minute scores and video highlights from the games.
“When it comes to technology, the NHL is the best out of the four leagues,” Storkan said. “The internet provides a huge amount of info and accessibility.”
As for us hockey fans, we don’t mind the crazy last names or the fast puck. We love it, and we love talking about it. We’ve constantly trying to defend our faith, citing the myriad reasons hockey truly is the greatest sport on earth. We hope the sport we so desperately cheer for will someday beat out those other sports, taking its rightful place in our society’s athletic culture.
But until then, we don’t really mind being the underdogs.
