Contract The NHL
The National Hockey League is in trouble. Attendance is down in arenas across the league and with the impending labor troubles, Commissioner Gary Bettman has turned to... Jim Belushi? Now if you've seen Belushi's NHL promos, I think you'll agree that nothing good has come of anything involving Jim Belushi since The Man With One Red Shoe.
In all seriousness, the NHL is rapidly becoming less relevant than an Enron stock report. Rapid declines seem to be the trend for hockey with fewer goals being scored and fewer fans around to see teams run the highly entertaining neutral zone trap.
To improve the quality of play in the NHL, the league must consider a course of action that has been resisted by other sports but an action that has been suggested by its own players. Contraction.
Like the NBA, the NHL over-expanded during the 1990s but hockey suffered from its rapid growth. During the 2000-01 season, over 20 million fans attended NHL games. This year, the league projects to draw just under half a million fewer fans.
It's not just established teams that are struggling to draw fans, five of the bottom 10 in attendance per game this season are franchises that were created or relocated during the 1990s. Even a recent power like the Pittsburgh Penguins has suffered and will finish at the bottom of the league in attendance for the second straight season.
Also in 2000-01, teams combined to average just over five and a half goals a game. This year, teams are combining for just over five goals a game. This might seem like a small change when looking at one game, but over the course of the year this means over 600 fewer goals will be scored.
As you probably know, scoring in down in the NBA as well but basketball hasn't suffered as much economically because of the way that the league uses its marketable stars.
Expansion in both sports has opened the floodgates for a wave of international athletes to come to the United States to compete in the best leagues in the world. The NBA has taken advantage of this and made stars out of international players like Dirk Nowitzki and Yao Ming.
The NHL currently has Russians first and second in overall points and a Fin leading the league in goals against average. Now, try and name any of these players. Chances are Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk and Mikka Kiprusoff didn't come to mind.
Hockey is stuck because they want to market players like the NBA, but lack a transcendent star like Wayne Gretzky. Add that fact that these league leaders speak English as a second language and that hockey doesn't have the same worldwide appeal as basketball and the NHL is currently without a star to lean on.
Marketing teams isn't an option for the NHL because many casual fans have very little knowledge of the newest teams in the league. If fans have trouble naming the leading scorers, not many can come up with players like Rick Nash of the Columbus Blue Jackets who just happens to the leading the league in goals.
In addition to these handicaps, the NHL has a work stoppage looming when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on September 15th. The owners are pushing for a salary cap and a lockout is expected because the players don't want a salary cap. Stop me if this seems familiar.
So if the NHL manages to start next season without its second lockout in less than 10 years, the action on the ice will be largely the same. Contracting two or four teams would address many of the problems that have been created by the rapid expansion.
Contraction would obviously lower the number of players in the league meaning that the fans would have a better chance to know what is going on in the league. This would also raise the overall talent level of the league as the worst players would be the first to be unemployed with only 26 or 28 teams out there as employers instead of the 30 current teams.
With a better talent level on the ice and a better quality of play, I believe that casual hockey fans like myself would be more inclined to actually watch the games. Contests are much harder to watch than just a few years ago.
Just like the NBA and the NFL, teams have decided to try to limit their mistakes to give themselves the best chances to win with inferior talent. NHL teams like Detroit, Vancouver and Colorado play open hockey but that is because they have the offensive talent to do so.
NHL players like Brett Hull have suggested that contraction might be one of the best things for hockey. Making radical rule changes like removing the red line would end up changing a sport that doesn't need that type of fixing. Some have argued that players are bigger and faster than ever and a rule change would help the game, but have players grown that much in the last four years?
Even baseball sees a change in its numbers when it expands. Over time, these numbers balance themselves out as the talent level catches up to the numbers of teams. Hockey doesn't have time to let this process take places as the league needs to make itself financially viable as soon as possible.
No matter what the NHL decides to do, I hope it can recapture some of the same excitement that it had during the 1980s and 1990s. If the league gets better again, maybe they can get Jim Belushi off my television and on to his true calling of being a permanent source for E! True Hollywood Story.
File last modified March 01, 2004
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