Saving Hockey
I was browsing the internets today when I came across a post about Fantasy Hockey saving the NHL. While I agree that Fantasy Hockey systems could be improved to help fans get hooked on hockey, the percentage of fans that even play fantasy sports for any league is small compared to TV viewership. Making hockey fun to follow is helpful, but increased viewership is what makes it worthwhile to advertisers (and ESPN) and therefore profitable. I love hockey, so I’ve put a lot of thought into what could be done to save the sport. Here’s my list of far-fetched and feasible ideas that could return hockey to the glory days.
1. Fire Gary Bettman, hire Wayne Gretzky. Gary Bettman should absolutely not have a job. In fact, he shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. He’s not a hockey man, and he’s killed the league with two lockouts at critical times and insane franchise and TV moves. I’ve even read conspiracy theories that David Stern convinved the NHL to hire Bettman because he knew Gary would ruin the sport, leaving the basketball as America’s top third sport.
Meanwhile, Gretzky was more convincing as commissioner of the Bubble Hockey League than Bettman has ever been in the NHL post. Screw the betting scandal: Wayne’s still the NHL’s only household name, a smart guy and more than anything, a hockey guy. You’ve got to promote your stars, and Gretzky should be the NHL foreman.
2. Play games earlier. Games start anywhere from 7 - 8 local time, which is already too late for a sporting event, and makes it impossible for East Coast fans to watch their teams when they head west. I know the NHL wants to avoid scheduling conflicts with other prime time events, but that just begs of desparation. If you aren’t the top ticket in prime time, pretend you are. All games should start from 6-6:30pm local time weekdays, and 4:00pm on Saturday. No one wants to be watching TV as late as 9pm on a Saturday, they want to be out partying. Saturday afternoon games are perfect for filling the spot between college football and hitting the clubs.
3. Simplify Sunday. I know I just said that hockey should pretend they’re the number one sport, but Sunday is a different story. Instead of multiple games at 1pm and Sunday night, the NHL should play just one, nationally-televised game on Sunday. They should play it opposite the late NFL game at 4pm Eastern and coordinate it with the NFL schedule so teams in the Sunday game aren’t competing with cross-town NFL franchises playing at the same time. It probably violates their contract with the NFL, but if at all possible, NBC should carry the “National Game” as the lead-in to Sunday Night Football. It goes without saying that the National Game should feature a steady diet of Malkin, Crosby and Ovechkin.
4. Shorten the schedule. 82 is way too many games. It makes each game less valuable as a spectator event and allows fans to ignore bits of the season instead of being forced to focus on every single match. Plus, and here’s the meat of the issue, the Stanley Cup is played far too late. No one wants to think about hockey, much less attend a game, once the weather warms up and the baseball season starts. The Stanley Cup finals should end no later than March 31, which means cutting the season down to something like 60 games and implementing my next point.
5. Playoffs?! Are you kidding me? Sending more than half the league to the playoffs is a joke. I know the NHL wants to reward fans in small markets with lots of playoff bids, but 16 teams makes it far too easy to get to the playoffs. It rewards mediocre play, and frankly, gives fans little to be proud of unless their team makes the conference finals. Meanwhile, because it’s so easy, fans of teams who don’t make the playoffs have a hard time seeing the bright points and tend to jump the shark after unsuccessful seasons at a higher rate than other sports.
Contrast that to the MLB, where only eight teams (or 26.6%) make the playoffs, and you see why fans get so excited for the baseball post season. I would convert hockey to a similar eight-team bracket, with a first round, conference finals round and Stanley Cup finals round, all best-of-seven series. Like the current NHL format, the division winners should get an automatic ticket to the playoffs as seeds 1-3, with the fourth drawn from the best of the remaining teams.
6. Ditch the zone. I hate the trapezoid, even though I like calling it the trapezone. I’m not a big proponent of math in general, but geometry is my worst subject, so including weird shapes on the rink to create arbitrary boundaries for the goalie doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It sounds like a protectionary rule you might see in youth roller hockey, but not appropriate for the big kids’ game. If you want to decrease the goalie’s impact on the game, let players check them when they venture out of the crease. They’re already wearing more padding than anyone else, they can take it if they want to play out of the crease area.
7. Shoot from the right angles. One of the best things the NHL can do to get fans interested is show them how complex and fast and beautiful the game really is. To do this, they need to get “inside the glass,” as it were, with some new camera angles that bring TV viewers closer to the action. Obviously, last year’s rail cam experiment was a total dud. It’s too shaky and there’s no real sense of depth when you’re shooting from the side. That said, the NHL needs to keep experimenting with how they film hockey, because current camera angles just don’t do the game justice.
8. Widen the playing field. The NHL should adopt the international rink size. It gives players more room to work with and therefore more creative plays and more scoring. Fans love olympic hockey, and the NHL could do well by copying some of the game’s international mystique, which brings me to my next point.
9. Count up, not down. When the NHL records goals, they record them as being scored in the fifth or the 12th minute, and yet the clock counts down, not up, meaning those are realy minutes 15 or 8. This is confusing for new fans and forces people like me to struggle with unnecessary math. The NHL should count up, like in international hockey, both to make it easier on fans and capture some of the mystique of international hockey and soccer. Speaking of which, foreign soccer fans might be more willing to adopt the NHL if the timing system was similar.
10. It’s the marketing, stupid. Back when hockey was “The Coolest Game on Earth,” it was the coolest game on Earth. It also had some of the coolest commercials. MyNHL is by far one of the worst slogans and marketing campaigns ever. It has no energy, no life, and the commercials themselves are just bad. They look like the product of student filmmakers, not a major sports league. If I was the NHL, I would fire my ad firm and hire just about anyone else. I would also start a series of hockey commercials based on the trailers for “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” with the league’s superstars talking candidly, on camera, about other superstars with dramatic highlights from classic games mixed in. Think about it: Hockey is a foreigner’s game, it’s a fast game, it’s a beautiful game with tons of tradition and history, and most importantly, really smart, articulate, humble, respectful and usually funny players people can identify with. That’s something you can market, and done the right way, it should be really intriguing to US audiences.
To make matters worse, companies aren’t really putting a lot of effort into hockey-themed commercials anymore, which is also a problem. I remember watching Avs games back before the lockout just to see the latest Hockey Falls commercial. If I was the NHL, I would do anything to get commercials like those back, even giving Bud Light and other vendors steep discounts to run them. They made hockey personal and made every minute of a game fun to watch. If nothing else, the NHL should buy the rights to Hockey Falls and other famous campaigns and use them as new marketing campaigns. Even though this is the “new” NHL, people have fond memories of hockey’s past, and seeing that stuff around again could draw them back in.
So that’s my rant. The Rockies are in the World Series, which is super exciting, but I wanted to touch one something else while we have a few days off. Hopefully the NHL will still be alive and kicking the next time the Rockies win the pennant. If not, well, I’m always open to take the commissioner’s job…call me.
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1. Derek Scruggs - October 17, 2007 @ 9:08 am
One other - go to NBA-style scheduling so every team plays each other twice (home & away). The Canadiens haven’t played in Denver in something like three years. Same for Rangers and Flyers. Penguins and Sidney Crosby are finally coming this year, but why shut us out from seeing stars like that?
2. Gabe Stein - October 17, 2007 @ 9:22 am
Excellent suggestion Derek. There’s no excuse for not giving every fan a chance to see Crosby and other stars up close at least once a season.
3. Joe - October 17, 2007 @ 10:04 am
Bettman’s gotta go!!!
http://www.FireBettman.com
4. shorty - October 18, 2007 @ 1:04 am
Nice piece…Thanx for the link…
5. fantasy sports » Saving Hockey - October 18, 2007 @ 8:29 am
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