The NHL needs to be careful not to bastardize the Classic. I believe that they did like 5 other outdoor games in addition to the classic last season which seriously diminishes the novelty (especially when one is in LA in 60 degree temps).

It's not a novelty anymore if everyone is doing it.

I am an enormous hockey fan, probably more so than even college football, but even I can acknowledge that the NHL is easily the worst run of all of the major professional sports leagues.

They just can't ever seem to get it right. I think it is a clear case of trying to serve too many different masters. What makes the NHL unique is that it is really the only league which is culturally centered in one country (Canada) but financially driven by another country (United States). That is that league's primary problem - always has been, always will be.

That is part if what has made the Winter Classic so damn remarkable. The NHL actually did get that right and it has been an enormous success. Remember, when they first announced they were going to try this experiment on New Year's Day no less, literally every major sports outlet openly mocked their plan to go head to head up against major college football bowl games. And yet the ratings have been strong by hockey standards and the cultural impact has been undeniable. HBO even did a marvelous series on the lead up to the Winter classic called "24/7: the Road to the Winter Classic." It was some of the best sports television I have ever seen. It was very similar to their NFL training camp show "Hard Knocks" but was better because it focused more on the lead up to a regular-season game rather than the struggles of young players trying to make a team. Now, nobody is laughing and the NBA is even talking about playing an outdoor game of its own.

Unfortunately, in true NHL fashion, they eventually ruined it through a series of crazy missteps. First, some coaches - most notably Detroit's Mike Babcock - refused to give HBO the access it needed to continue the show. Basically, they relegated them to outside the locker room and HBO walked away – as they should. You know, because securing those two points in December versus the Florida Panthers is more important than growing your game. Now, that behind the scenes documentary style program is on some Internet channel called Epic Sports. What an amazing blunder by the NHL.

Also, a lot of the owners took a very narrow view of the game - as is the league's custom - and instead of looking at the Winter Classic as a celebration of the sport, they began to get petulant and demand that they get to host a game too. It was ridiculously shortsighted and the type of thing you would never see and any of the other major sports leagues. Last year, there were six outdoor hockey games. Naturally, it diluted the entire thing and ruined it.

Most galling of all to this hockey fan who does see the big picture was that there were games scheduled opposite the Winter Classic on January 1. I cannot tell you how angry that made me. What the hell is wrong with the owners of those teams?

I think all of those things tell you everything you need to know about why hockey will always be at best the fourth most popular sport in the United States. That league, which is much better run than it has ever been run in its entire history, is still a garage league on every conceivable level.

I still adore it and I think the NHL playoffs are the best playoffs in pro sports and are only rivaled by the NCAA men's basketball tournament as the best playoffs and all of sports. Seriously, hockey series are what sports are all about – they are almost always wars, they often feature major upsets, and they usually are very dramatic and hard-fought. What's not to love about that?

However, that league is very clearly poorly organized and as a collective, NHL owners are the absolute biggest idiots on the face of the earth. I can't tell you how many insanely idiotic decisions they have made over the years which has brought harm to that league. Yet, it still continues to survive because of the beauty of the sport, not the wisdom of its leadership.

I have to agree with you. I am not a hockey fan at all, but the Winter Classic was the one thing they (previously) had done well.

What's funny is that hockey fans usually mindlessly blame everything on NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. I understand why everyone dislikes Bettman. He is cold and thoroughly unlikable. He seems petty and defensive and is about as cuddly as a cactus.

However, the truth is he has an impossible job. He is trying to herd 30 different cats - all with enormous egos and wildly different agendas. That is not really all that different then any commissioner in any sport.

What makes Bettman's situation so unique is that balancing act between the financial realities and the cultural romanticism. Also, a lot of Americans do not realize this but Canada's culture is actually quite different than that from the United States - especially as it pertains to hockey.

A lot of Americans look at Canada as our lovable younger brother to the north. However, as someone who has spent a lot of time there, I can tell you they do not share that same sense of camaraderie. They look at the United States as a useful ally but also as a giant that needs to be kept at arms length and which should never trusted. Trust me on this one, from their perspective, it is a much more complicated relationship than it is from our perspective.

That is a huge problem for anyone who runs the NHL and truthfully, for an American, indeed a "basketball guy" no less, Gary Bettman has done a remarkable job in that regard. I have no idea how long he has served as commissioner but it's coming up on two decades at a minimum. I never would've guessed that would've happened in a million years.

Complicating matters even further is the fact that the owner of one of his teams (Ed Snider - Philadelphia Flyers) also owns Comcast, which now owns NBC – which pretty much controls all of its games that air in the United States. Can you imagine that happening in any other major professional sports league? Talk about a delicate situation.

Honestly, though I don't particularly like Gary Bettman or his public persona, I have no choice but to respect the man and to empathize with his struggle. All things considered, he has done a great job dealing with the most unreasonable and selfish ownership group in all of major professional sports.

I agree with you the Bettman is definitely underrated as a Commissioner, if only because of the financial difficulties he has to overcome.

(01-05-2015 10:56 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  What's funny is that hockey fans usually mindlessly blame everything on NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. I understand why everyone dislikes Bettman. He is cold and thoroughly unlikable. He seems petty and defensive and is about as cuddly as a cactus.

However, the truth is he has an impossible job. He is trying to herd 30 different cats - all with enormous egos and wildly different agendas. That is not really all that different then any commissioner in any sport.

What makes Bettman's situation so unique is that balancing act between the financial realities and the cultural romanticism. Also, a lot of Americans do not realize this but Canada's culture is actually quite different than that from the United States - especially as it pertains to hockey.

A lot of Americans look at Canada as our lovable younger brother to the north. However, as someone who has spent a lot of time there, I can tell you they do not share that same sense of camaraderie. They look at the United States as a useful ally but also as a giant that needs to be kept at arms length and which should never trusted. Trust me on this one, from their perspective, it is a much more complicated relationship than it is from our perspective.

That is a huge problem for anyone who runs the NHL and truthfully, for an American, indeed a "basketball guy" no less, Gary Bettman has done a remarkable job in that regard. I have no idea how long he has served as commissioner but it's coming up on two decades at a minimum. I never would've guessed that would've happened in a million years.

Complicating matters even further is the fact that the owner of one of his teams (Ed Snider - Philadelphia Flyers) also owns Comcast, which now owns NBC – which pretty much controls all of its games that air in the United States. Can you imagine that happening in any other major professional sports league? Talk about a delicate situation.

Honestly, though I don't particularly like Gary Bettman or his public persona, I have no choice but to respect the man and to empathize with his struggle. All things considered, he has done a great job dealing with the most unreasonable and selfish ownership group in all of major professional sports.

Remember that Rogers Communications, which signed the national Canadian TV deal that pays even more than the US deal, is also part-owner of the Maple Leafs. It's not an accident that Hamilton, Ontario (part of Maple Leafs territory) keeps getting shot down as a relocation market even though they are one of the few places that can deliver a brand new state-of-the-art stadium tomorrow if an NHL team committed to that area. So, the conflict-of-interest goes even beyond Comcast: BOTH of the NHL's broadcast partners in BOTH countries are owners of franchises.

I don't think Gary Bettman is a good commissioner, but I'd somewhat agree that he's not as bad as hockey fans make him out to be. For instance, a lot of fans bemoan the expansion and relocations into the Sun Belt, but to be fair, if the sport is going to grow long-term, it needs a presence in places like Florida and Texas. The sport needs multi-generational fans in those areas 15 to 20 years from now - it's easy to point to the fans in Original Six cities and Canada where they have had several decades of fans to build upon, but the future is still in the Sun Belt and the NHL needs to make inroads there over time.

That being said, expansion into the Sun Belt didn't have to come at the cost of exiting great hockey markets. There's no single better hockey state in the US than Minnesota, yet the NHL let the Stars move and left that market open throughout the 1990s. The NHL has been lucky that the Stars have arguably been the strongest relocation, but it still boggles my mind that the league would have left Minnesota, of all places, out on a lurch at all. It would be like the NFL ditching Dallas for... well... Minnesota. Winnipeg should have never lost the original Jets, either. The NHL for far too long made it into a zero sum game where they seemed to believe that Sun Belt expansion had to come at the *expense* of *leaving* the North. They appear to have wised up a bit on that front and admitting some of their mistakes (although I fear that the league's new desire to break into Las Vegas isn't going to provide any different results compared to Atlanta or Phoenix - the NBA could definitely make a killing in Vegas, but I don't see the NHL having that type of upside).

Frank, I agree with you about the Minnesota situation. However, the Minnesota move is a perfect example of what I'm talking about w/r/t the incredible idiocy and lack of foresight of NHL owners. They tend to think of themselves as 30 independent businesses rather than 30 franchises of the same operation.

Then owner Norman Green, frustrated by his attempts to get Minnesota political officials to build him a new arena, basically did that completely on his own without any consultation with the league office. What other league would allow that?

That was one of the all-time screw jobs I have ever seen for an owner to do to a city. It was ridiculous and you are right, it was bizarre that the NHL did not get back into Minnesota until years later.

I don't necessarily agree with you on the Winnipeg situation. I see that as an entirely different kettle of fish.

You have to remember that the Canadian loony was so weak at that time. It was something like $.65 on the dollar. Also, Winnipeg'a arena was so incredibly old that they really had no chance to compete. Until they built the MTS Centre, there was no NHL quality facility in the entire province of Manitoba. Also you have to remember that the MTS Centre has only 15,000 seats so it is only marginally an NHL caliber building. Also, at that time the NHL did not have a salary cap, further complicating the Jets' plight. Quebec City faced a very similar dilemma before their team moved to Denver.

I definitely agree that the NHL expanded too aggressively in too short of a time period to the Sunbelt markets. Those additions should've happened much more gradually. Again though, I see that as more of an ownership thing that a commissioner thing. I think the owners were holding off their hands demanding money and it was Bettman's job to deliver that money.

Finally, I want to say that I think the Sunbelt teams get a really bad rap. I believe they are held to an entirely different standard than some of the others.

Clearly, places like Phoenix and Miami have not worked. However, it has worked in San Jose. It is also worked in Anaheim, Raleigh and Dallas. I think the jury is still out on Nashville and Columbus.

I think it comes down to winning. Almost all of the places where it has worked have won Stanley Cups. That tends to engender fan loyalty. If your team stinks every year, as has happened in Columbus for example, of course you're going to struggle to gain a foothold in that market regardless of your climate.

Columbus' climate is very similar to Pittsburgh's, St. Louis' and Washington's and hockey is extremely popular in those places. It will be popular in Columbus too but their team can't be near the bottom of the league standings every single year.

Pittsburgh annually leads the NHL and NBA in local television viewership. If you go back and look at the ratings through the years, Pittsburgh is always at the top of those lists. Also, the team has sold out every hockey game for the past several years and will sell out every hockey game for the next several years. However, when the Penguins were terrible for a prolonged period of time, of course local interest in the franchise waned. That is not unique to places that have warmer weather in the winter. The same was true of Chicago when the Blackhawks stunk for several years in a row.

It is just common sense, when your team is a perennial loser, fans are going to find other things to occupy their time. I think if Nashville or Columbus made a run deep in the playoffs, the interest in those places would rival that of other cities in the north whose teams have made similar runs.

As for the Las Vegas thing, frankly, I am torn. I completely agree with you that it is more of an NBA type of town then an NHL type of town. Also, there is no question that is a transient city and that arena is going to be half-empty on many nights and full of fans from the opposing team on many other nights. That part of it is definitely going to suck.

However, one major difference between Las Vegas and similarly transient places like Phoenix and Miami is Las Vegas will sell out all of those luxury suites and sponsorships in no time flat. That entire city is built on the entertainment industry and professional sports are arguably the major entertainment industry in this country. I think that guarantees that Las Vegas will almost certainly be a major success financially.

From a fan experience standpoint, I don't think it will be a great thing for the league. Then again, knowing these owners as I do, I have no doubt that all they will see is the $$$'s and they will quickly move to add that city to their list of markets.

I fully expect the NHL to announce that it is expanding to Las Vegas and Seattle by the 2016 All-Star game at the latest. I think they see themselves as being in a race with the NBA to get into those markets first (or in Seattle's case to reenter that market) and they will do whatever it takes to win those races.

Yes, I agree that Vegas has a lot of pent-up demand for a pro sports team. Of course, my initial reaction to the prospect of a Vegas team was EXACTLY what Grantland wrote about the topic a few weeks ago:

Quote:You can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to the news that Vegas might get an NHL franchise in the near future. If they’re all “SWEET, it’ll actually be cheaper for me and my buddies to fly in for a game and have some fun on the side than to get decent tickets on StubHub in our own city,” they’re probably a Chicago Blackhawks fan, for example.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/gary-b...las-vegas/

I'm guilty as charged there.

To be fair nothing works well in Miami. If a team is not winning and winning big its popularity in Miami is pretty pathetic and that goes for virtually any sport or endeavor there.

First, I'd love the Hurricanes to get a Winter Classic game... the whole idea of playing it is pretty darn cool.

*************

The NHL needs the sunbelt so to speak for tv ratings and growing the fanbase. The catch though is, for hockey to really take hold in non-cold weather markets you need winning. You also need a way to grow it in the community. I mean, with football, baseball, basketball, and soccer you can play all year if you want.... for hockey, you need ICE. So, in the sunbelt you need either roller hockey support year round OR you need ice rinks to catch hold in the area. You have to grow the kids into playing the game.

You also need the tv partners to put your games on the air.... I mean NBC isn't NBCSN! I like my FOXSS coverage of the Hurricanes but without a local team I doubt I'd watch that much. I mean, in other words, the NHL need a better national tv penetrations like the NBA has with TNT and ESPN. You have those but in own local market, teams get their games on their local FOXSN.

(01-04-2015 08:47 PM)billyjack Wrote:  Back in the 90's there was a movie with Russell Crowe named "Mystery Alaska", about a pickup hockey team that played pond hockey up in Alaska. They played without boards or glass, and with only a low pile of snow as the playing surface boundary.

Something like this at a baseball stadium would provide better sightlines, but would be pretty radical... plus it would be a different style of hockey... plus fans might get whacked with the puck...!

I wonder if it's possible for them to make transparent boards. Would improve the viewing experience considerably.

(01-06-2015 01:26 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  

(01-04-2015 08:47 PM)billyjack Wrote:  Back in the 90's there was a movie with Russell Crowe named "Mystery Alaska", about a pickup hockey team that played pond hockey up in Alaska. They played without boards or glass, and with only a low pile of snow as the playing surface boundary.

Something like this at a baseball stadium would provide better sightlines, but would be pretty radical... plus it would be a different style of hockey... plus fans might get whacked with the puck...!

I wonder if it's possible for them to make transparent boards. Would improve the viewing experience considerably.

The old St Paul Civic Center had plexiglass boards. The Fighting Saints of the WHA used to play there. It was wonderful for viewing the puck.

The NHL is so traditional that they probably outlawed it.

(01-05-2015 11:56 PM)Sultan of Euphonistan Wrote:  To be fair nothing works well in Miami. If a team is not winning and winning big its popularity in Miami is pretty pathetic and that goes for virtually any sport or endeavor there.

That's true. In a way, it's a "too big to fail" market where every league feels the need to be represented there regardless of weak fan support because of its sheer size (#8 metro area) and influence as a Latin American business center. Just look at all of the hoops that MLS is going through to give a new Miami franchise every chance to be added with David Beckham's backing even though there are several other good-sized markets (i.e. San Antonio, Phoenix, Detroit) that could step in.

(01-05-2015 11:56 PM)Sultan of Euphonistan Wrote:  To be fair nothing works well in Miami. If a team is not winning and winning big its popularity in Miami is pretty pathetic and that goes for virtually any sport or endeavor there.

The sports executive who can fill a venue consistently with a mediocre team in Miami is the guy I want running my favorite team. You sell there with an average team, you can sell any place.