The Future of Televised Hockey

[Guest the pinjockey]

I think they should just get rid of the center line. Will purists bitch? Yes. Will they bitch even more if the league is dead in five years? Yes.

 

Also it doesn't help the league when the big market teams aren't performing year in year out.

 

LA - Kings suck

NY - BWAHAHAHAHA

Chicago - I can't name one of their players

Philly - We wait for the yearly choking

Boston - Bruins suck

 

Detroit, Dallas, and Denver seem to be the only consistently good big markets and I dont think you can build a league around that.

 

As much as the league likes to think so the Devils don't impact NY so the only fans they have are north Jersey and they play so god awful boring that they can't fill seats.

 

Anaheim, Minnesota, Vancouver who cares?

[Guest treble charged]

Are ALL of the finals games going to be on ESPN? I know usually the first game or two is on cable, but then don't the usually switch it over to ABC? I understand that they have NBA commitments, too, but you'd think they could schedule it so that the games don't run head to head.

[Guest CanadianChris]

Are ALL of the finals games going to be on ESPN? I know usually the first game or two is on cable, but then don't the usually switch it over to ABC? I understand that they have NBA commitments, too, but you'd think they could schedule it so that the games don't run head to head.

According to ESPN.com, ABC is picking up Games 3-7.

[Agent_Bond34 0]

The casual hockey fan wants to see end to end games with exciting scoring chances and spectacular saves.

As a casual hockey fan, I agree with that.

 

That's the exact reason I tune in to watch hockey, especially in the playoffs.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Maybe the biggest difference is the padding the goalie wears compared to 15 years ago. Back than you could see why scoring was easier, sure teams were more offensive minded, but the goalies didn't have nearly the padding they do today. Whether or not the NHL could reduce the size of padding, I don't know but I think scoring would pick up at least a little.

[Guest the pinjockey]

I think Al Morganti on the radio mentioned a couple weeks ago there was a rumor floating around that they might look into increasing the width of the goal by an inch or two. That may help a little.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Chicago - I can't name one of their players

Come on! "Mr. Stability," Theo Fleury! And there's Jocelyn Thibault, the man who morphs from J-S Giguere to an empty net under pressure. Other than that, we've got nothing.

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

I think that the NHL should do something about games ending in ties. Who wants to sit through 65 minutes of hockey to go away saying "Yay! My team tied!"?

[Guest Karnage]

Maybe the biggest difference is the padding the goalie wears compared to 15 years ago. Back than you could see why scoring was easier, sure teams were more offensive minded, but the goalies didn't have nearly the padding they do today. Whether or not the NHL could reduce the size of padding, I don't know but I think scoring would pick up at least a little.

Yeah your right...Look at Giguere. His shoulder pads are almost above his head.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

I think that the NHL should do something about games ending in ties. Who wants to sit through 65 minutes of hockey to go away saying "Yay! My team tied!"?

Well they made OT 4 on 4. Don't know if that made that much of a difference in OT scoring but it was put in place for more OT wins.

[Guest Karnage]

Spike TV might get the NHL once the ESPN/ABC contract expires after all. Now that would suck.

[Guest redbaron51]

I think they should just get rid of the center line. Will purists bitch? Yes. Will they bitch even more if the league is dead in five years? Yes.

 

Also it doesn't help the league when the big market teams aren't performing year in year out.

 

LA - Kings suck

NY - BWAHAHAHAHA

Chicago - I can't name one of their players

Philly - We wait for the yearly choking

Boston - Bruins suck

 

Detroit, Dallas, and Denver seem to be the only consistently good big markets and I dont think you can build a league around that.

 

As much as the league likes to think so the Devils don't impact NY so the only fans they have are north Jersey and they play so god awful boring that they can't fill seats.

 

Anaheim, Minnesota, Vancouver who cares?

last time I checked, Chicago and LA aren't big market teams.

 

and last time I checked Colorado and St. Louis aren't old teams either

[Guest treble charged]

Huh?

 

How are the Blackhawks and Kings not big market teams? Aren't they the 3rd and 2nd biggest TV markets in the US, respectively?

 

You never cease to amaze me, redbaron.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

last time I checked, Chicago and LA aren't big market teams.

 

and last time I checked Colorado and St. Louis aren't old teams either

Everyone seems to have a different interpretation of "market size." If you define a market as the city and its metropolitan area, Chicago is #3, L.A. is #2, and Greater New York's three teams are all #1. (Though we all know the Devils are a bunch of "#2.")

 

However, if you define the market in terms of how the product is promoted and distributed and so forth, Chicago and Los Angeles do a stellar job of shrinking themselves to nothing. Ideally, the third-largest city in America should have a television outlet for its well-known hockey team. But ideally, Bill Wirtz shouldn't own the team. The Hawks are able to get respectable revenues through ticket sales, but given the circumstances, the team is not doing what it should be. Not being on the West Coast, I can't speak for Los Angeles, but I can conjecture that they would've been a large-market team under this definition during the Kings' glory days of Gretzky And Friends. Then you have the Carolina Hurricanes, who at one point had no television or radio outlets, or any real promotion of the team. Hartford couldn't have been THAT bad.

 

As for St. Louis and Vancouver, one again, defining "old." The teams themselves date back to 1967 for the Blues, and the Avs go to 1972, 1979, or 1995, depending on how you look at it.

 

As for the players themselves, they are very old teams. MacInnis, Pronger, Osgood, et al have been around an awfully long time. On the Avalanche side, Sakic's been a Nord/Av since at least 1990, Forsberg came to the Nords via the Lindros trade, Rob Blake dates back to the L.A. Kings of the mid 90s, and Patrick Roy has been playing almost 20 years.

[Guest CanadianChris]

On an aside, why is it that ALL of the Chicago owners are tight-fisted little misers? There's the McCaskeys, who own the Bears, Jerry Reinsdorf, who owns the White Sox (White Flag trade, anyone?) and Bulls (he hoped he didn't regret paying Jordan $30 mil for one more year...dumbass), the Chicago Tribune, who own the Cubs and could (and should) open up the vault, but prefer to bask in the profits from sellout after sellout at Wrigley, and Wirtz. Do these guys not know how many people live around Chicago? Do they not know they could spend much more and still turn a profit?

[Guest redbaron51]

when i'm thinkin big market, i'm thinking financial wise.

 

 

old teams are Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Detroit and New York.

[Guest nl5xsk1]

old teams are Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Detroit and New York.

sadly, you have to consider the teams from the '67 expansion as old now as well. Yes, they aren't the Original Six, but teams like Philly and St Louis have so much more history than even the WHA teams. Stick with the remaining Original 12 as the old teams, then the WHA era as middle of the road, and keep the 90s expansion teams as the new kids.

[Guest hockeytown9321]

I think a bigger concern for hockey than who is going to carry the games is that the CBA runs out after next year. I think there could very easily be no hockey in 2004-5.

 

On the Red line being taken out, I consider myself a purist and I actually wouldn't mind it. They tried it a few years ago in some preseason games and everybody seemed to like it.

 

I also hear they might try Scotty Bowman's idea of 1 ref watching the all the play and the other one watching for obsturction. That might help consistencey, at least during individual games.

[Guest MaxPower27]

After Game 1 last night, with Anaheim having an opportunity for a few odd man breaks the other way, only to be thwarted by the dastardly two line pass, I think that getting rid of the center line would be a welcome addition to the NHL. It's one thing to have such close offsides calls, but it's another when a team has a legitimate scoring opportunity that is pissed away because the passer was behind a blue line.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Don't we always hear about the league promising to cut down on obstruction and the first month or so they seem to be doing so, but by the end of the year its forgotten or at least not talked about has much as it was at the beginning of the year.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

On an aside, why is it that ALL of the Chicago owners are tight-fisted little misers? There's the McCaskeys, who own the Bears, Jerry Reinsdorf, who owns the White Sox (White Flag trade, anyone?) and Bulls (he hoped he didn't regret paying Jordan $30 mil for one more year...dumbass), the Chicago Tribune, who own the Cubs and could (and should) open up the vault, but prefer to bask in the profits from sellout after sellout at Wrigley, and Wirtz. Do these guys not know how many people live around Chicago? Do they not know they could spend much more and still turn a profit?

They don't need to spend money. We've grown to embrace our mediocre teams more than some cities do championship-caliber teams. People will forever go to Wrigley, good or bad as the Cubs may be.

 

As for Bill Wirtz: I'm sort of busy with other things right now, so I don't have time to go on a tirade about that guy. But he is worse than the Jerrys, the McCaskeys, and the Tribune, combined.