And that's the problem with the NHL. Long considered the 'fourth' sport behind football, basketball and baseball -- or the 'fifth' sport, behind Nascar, hockey languishes in television ratings for many reasons. This situation was compounded during the recent NHL lockout which started in September 2012 and blew past the scheduled October season start date, finally ending when a shortened season began January 19 running through April.
Game attendance in 1995 fell 20% after the 1994 baseball strike as fans showed their anger by keeping their butts out of seats. The NHL Players Association, led by Donald Fehr who headed the MLB Players Association in 1994 during the strike -- and the NHL itself, should be doing everything in their power to be conciliatory to fans and also to put on the best possible product on the ice.
I don't believe the players are on the same page as fans and owners.
I attended the Panthers/Capitals game last Tuesday at the BB&T Center where the Caps won the game 6-5 in overtime. Click here for the game recap. The poor play from both clubs reminded me of the recent NFL Pro Bowl games where players had a tacit agreement to avoid playing defense in order to avoid potential injury. The scores of the last two Pro Bowls were 59-41 and 62-35. It is within the realm of possibility that NHL players have internally agreed to 'go soft' during this shortened season to protect themselves because their conditioning was compromised due to the circumstances of the lockout and they don't want to risk injury and therefore more financial question marks prior to the start of the full 2013-14 season.
With increasing top salaries (none guaranteed in the NFL), limited playing careers and recent sensitization to the risk from accumulated head trauma, commerce and marketing have served to shift the emphasis from 'team' and 'selflessness' to 'me' and 'selfishness'. In the NBA, the game's most prominent big man Dwight Howard of the LA Lakers was criticized by teammates because, rather than even attempt to play through the pain of his recent shoulder injury, he sat out from January 30 through February 10 during a crucial run to try and make the playoffs. Factoring into his decision is also the fact that Howard may be playing somewhere else next season and that playing now may prolong the healing process and may affect his desirability from other teams.
So, like the Centers for Disease Control that can track viral epidemics back to the first infected person who contracted the disease, now the NHL is the latest patient in the emergency room, for a different kind of labor problem.
If you're looking for definitive proof that the NHL is slacking off, just ask your dentist. Look closely at the evidence in the two photos below. Which player got hit more often, Bobby Clarke in 1976 or Alexander Ovechkin in 2012?
Case closed.
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