If No One’s Around to See It…

“I love the NHL but it is seriously on its death bed.”

Those words belong to my friend Jordan Green and those words cut me deeply. You see, I wanted to do a running diary of Game 5 between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators because the Ducks had a chance to win the Stanley Cup. Jordan kindly informed me that no one outside of Anaheim and Canada cares about what happens, but he let me write the article anyway, because he is a good guy.

So, outside of Canada and Anaheim no one is watching the Stanley Cup. I read an article yesterday about how Game Three of the Stanley Cup Finals received a 1.1 rating on NBC, which is the lowest possible rating, tying a re-run of the show West Wing. I’m almost certain Martin Sheen is a huge hockey fan. After all, it was his son Emilio Estevez that played fictional hockey-god Gordon Bombay in the Mighty Ducks movies. Also, here seems like a good place to mention the irony that Emilio Estevez looks more like Martin Sheen then Charlie does, but Charlie was the one to keep his name. It’s a crazy world we live in.

Anyway, it’s sad that no one is watching because this series has seen some amazing hockey. I mean truly incredible hockey. But, like Jordan Green says, hockey remains on its death bed in America. It’s a shame. Game Four of the series drew 2.8 million viewers in Canada, not bad considering that Canada hasn’t rallied behind the Senators like they did the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames in the previous two finals.

I really had good intentions of providing you with a running diary of Game Five. After all, the Stanley Cup was in the building, and this could have been the last game of the year, not to mention the most exciting. I even pitched the idea to Jordan as a running diary. The intensity was right and it was a big game; the Senators were staring their season in the face, with one loss meaning their 9 month journey would end in vain, and the Ducks needed only 60 minutes of successful hockey to live out their dream of hoisting the Cup.

I really tried. I made about three entries, and then realized that my typing was causing me to miss chunks of action, and while I could have lived with that if it were the NBA Finals, missing the Stanley Cup Finals after watching hundreds of games (literally) this year was like working for a salary all year and then foregoing your pay. The thought was enough to drive me batty. I watched too many games this year and through the playoffs to not watch the last game of the year in scrupulous detail.

Now, the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win in professional sports, and it is also the coolest looking. For starters, it’s bloody massive, weighing almost 50 pounds, and if you win it, you get your name inscribed on the Cup and in hockey history. Also, it’s been hoisted and kissed by countless hockey greats, the players that molded the game into what it is today. The tradition is not matched by any other professional trophy, with the possible exception of MLB, because baseball has been around since shortly after Moses wrote the Torah.

I say the Cup is the hardest trophy to win in sports because it takes so many different elements to win. You need a great team, obviously, you need to have timely goal scoring, lucky bounces, key saves, limited mistakes, your stars and key role players need to stay healthy and you need to have freaking horseshoes in your hockey pants. You need to play physical, fight through injuries and generally ignore everyone and everything in your life in order to maintain your focus.

Now these factors are in place in every sport. I mean you need timely hits in baseball, and great pitching, and good health. You need big plays in football and crunch time execution in basketball. But hockey is unique because it combines skill and brute force. It is physical like football, but instead of playing once a week, you play three or four times. Instead of winning four games to claim the Superbowl, you have to win 16. And you’re not ever going to run the table in hockey, so no matter how you slice it, you’re going to play a lot of games. After already having played and been pounded for 82 games, it’s hard to believe that these guys play at least another 20, with the physical intensity even higher than it was in the regular season.

I feel this is a good time to mention that I always get emotional at the end of the last game. There are three things that get me misty-eyed; the captain of the victorious team hoisting the Stanley Cup, any super star athletes retiring speech or banner-raising ceremony, and that episode of “Fresh Prince” when Will Smith’s father came back and them promptly abandoned him for the second time (when Will Smith gets emotional, you’d best be getting emotional).

Anyways I get emotional when the captain raises the cup. Most likely, this is because it is my dream of all dreams to win the Stanley Cup, and not only that, to be the captain that is called to center ice to receive the trophy. So, knowing that this could happen tonight, you could understand how a guy could have a hard time making a running diary.

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So what happened, you ask? I’ll go ahead and assume you weren’t watching, because that’s where the smart money is. Well, Ottawa had cruised through the Eastern Conference, overwhelming all-comers with their mix of skilled and physical hockey. They were doing all the right things and even dispatched the mighty Buffalo Sabres in a mere five games before they waited for the eventual Western Champs the Ducks.

The Ducks had a similar path through the first two rounds, with neither the Minnesota Wild or the Vancouver Canucks offering much resistance, and the Ducks won both series in five games. In the Western Final, the Ducks played the Detroit Red Wings, and emerged victorious in a hard-fought six-game series. In the Stanley Cup Final, the Senators looked overwhelmed by Anaheim’s ability to physically punish Ottawa while shutting down their once bountiful offence.

Anaheim jumped to a quick two game advantage, and after two games in Ottawa the series was 3-1 in favor of the Ducks. That meant they were going back to So-Cal for Game Five where the first period was a crazy one. It’s a given in hockey that if you’re back is up against the wall in an elimination game like the Senators were, you need to come out and have a quick start. An early goal is ideal, especially against a strong defensive team like the Ducks. Yet instead of coming out and getting a goal the Senators took a run of penalties, eventually leading to a Andy McDonald goal off the skate of Chris Phillips that stood as a sign of things to come.

From there it went from bad to worse for the Senators, who seemed to be doomed by the hockey-gods in this series. The Senators missed open nets in the Finals, and generally played out of character from the minute they arrived on hockey’s grandest stage. The Ducks won, and now hockey is over and I have to wait until October until the love of my life returns.

Nonetheless I still couldn’t shake Jordan’s words. The NHL on its death bed? Could things really be this bad? I of course, am oblivious to the assertation. I live in Toronto, which is widely acknowledged as the world’s supreme hockey city, and I personally am enthralled with the game. Thusly, you might say I have a slight bias.

The truth is I have a huge bias. And if the game is suffering (so I’ve been told; keep in mind all my friends watch hockey too). This led to some soul searching (at work, while I had nothing to do) and some realizations as to where the NHL may have gone wrong.

You can’t say that going into the States has been a problem. The San Jose Sharks, Dallas Stars, Anaheim Ducks, Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning all boast sell-out crowds and good hockey teams. That being said, there probably shouldn’t be teams in Miami or Atlanta…and Nashville? Seriously? Tennessee, home of the Grand Ol’ Opry? Of all the cities in America, who decided to pick the one where College Football, country-singers and woman’s basketball reign supreme?

The real shame is that the City of Nashville lays claim to one of the league’s most exciting teams, though it is reported that no one in the area has actually witnessed this fact. The Predators finished the season averaging a mere 15 thousand fans per contest. But it gets worse; there are seven teams with lower average attendance than the Preds. Combine the lack of interest with those putrid mustard third-jerseys, and the problem is compounded.

After taking a peek at the numbers, the ten teams with lowest average attendance hold few similarities, aside from the fact that they are among the worst teams in the NHL. The extremely notable exception are the Anaheim Ducks who draw 16,000 fans a night, which is enough to fill the Honda Center to 95% of its capacity.

I don’t think the problem is a geographical one, nor do I think the problem is the product the NHL puts on the ice. Rather, I blame two things for the teams that suffer poor attendance down south; lack of familiarity and losing woes. I know this may seem condescending but I believe many Americans (especially ones outside Minnesota and Detroit) can’t fall in love with hockey simply because they haven’t grown up playing or even watching the game. As a devoted fan for many years I am apt to notice the little things that make the NHL special because I’ve played hockey since I was 5. I’m aware (painfully aware) of the degree of difficulty under which the players perform on a nightly basis.

How can Americans not like hockey? Let’s go down a check-list of awesome things in sports: speed? Hockey has it. Skill? Yep. Physicality? In abundance. Legalized fighting? Yes sir (and ma’am). And you think you got hit hard in high school football? Try getting crunched on skates, while you’re moving 4 times faster than you would on foot, but with half the balance. And you can’t run out of bounds in hockey. Your final destination is like a large piece of immobile glass being met with someone’s shoulder.

I make the comparison to my watching and understanding of football. I get the rules, I know the players, I watch some games and I enjoy them; but I don’t truly know football. I can’t look at the game through the eyes of someone who’s been there, nor could I call myself a passionate fan. However, if I were to watch a game with my friend Chad Gibbs, good ol’ Gibbsy would be bursting at the seams with glee at all the intricacies of the game. I could watch Peyton Manning calling audibles and not think anything about it. Meanwhile, others are screaming at the TV, “Snap the damn ball Peyton! Stop screwing around.” Guys (and gals) like Gibbsy grew up with football, I didn’t. I would attribute this natural phenomenon to be the major reason Americans don’t watch/like/love incessantly hockey.

The other thing that has occurred to me is that most of the teams at the bottom of the list are teams that are losing games. A lot of games. Once proud franchises like the New York Islanders, St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks are all floundering on the ice and subsequently at the ticket office. The fourth worst team, the Washington Capitals, have one of the league’s most exciting and dynamic young players in Alex Ovechkin, and yet no one is going to watch because the team loses game after game. And as for the Florida Panthers, well if I lived in South Beach, I wouldn’t be going to the rink either.

People will watch teams that win. Wayne Gretzky brought the NHL to Los Angeles and they came out in droves. Mario Lemieux made Pittsburgh a hockey town in the 90’s. The Blues and Blackhawks were accustomed to legendary crowds before their recent tenure in the NHL’s basement.

The truth is I don’t know how to get Americans to watch hockey on TV. It wasn’t so bad when ESPN carried games, but this was before Poker happened, and before Wrestling and NASCAR got out of control huge, and before UFC became the new cool thing to watch. Now, America has too many alternatives, and probably no idea where to find the games. NBC? Not usually. And what exactly is the Versus network?

I feel bad because I love hockey, but I don’t feel bad about not knowing what the answer is. So what if I don’t know how to get America to watch hockey? Neither does anybody else.