Beaten to death with its own stick
Areseven breaks his two-day silence in a bad mood. I'm so cranky that I've resorted to not only referring to myself in the third person, but I've referred to my third person pseudonym. Now THAT...is cranky.
But instead of taking it out on the rotten, hateful people who so richly deserve it, I'm taking it out by vomiting badly-structured blog sentences on pro hockey, the poor, ignored sports entity who was put out its misery yesterday in a tearful finale that was an emotional blow to almost a dozen people.
What's wrong with hockey? Nothing. It's a great game. But the NHL for years has ignored the fact that it hasn't created a marketable product. There are two kinds of people in this country who can enjoy the NHL: people who really really really really love hockey, and the people who live in a town with a really good hockey team and become rabid, drooling fans for a couple of months before going back to their largely sports-less lives.
But the casual fan can't wade through the ridiculous standings (more than three columns—win/loss/tie—and you're asking a lot of the casual fan), the overly-long season that's capped off by overly-long playoffs, the refusal to give up the cash cow that is series playoffs, the blind eye to the fighting during the games, the increasingly ridiculous mascot names, and the almost-random schedule that requires a daily check of the sports pages to have a prayer of keeping up. The NBA, MLB and MLS all have elements of these, but the NHL has them all.
Is American football the greatest sport ever invented, superior in gameplay to every other sport ever invented? Not at all. But the NFL has done a fantastic job of creating a marketable product, and most of this has to do with scheduling. The once-a-week schedule not only creates increased appetite in its die-hard fans, but it makes it tons easier for the casual fan to watch. The playoffs have the same appeal, and the Super Bowl is something that even people who don't care a lick about football watch because they can have a party on a Sunday night. That schedule is inherent to the punishing game of football in the first place, but it makes all the difference in the world.
The other pro sports leagues could learn something and at least do and work to create schedules that make the rabid fans happy, but makes it easier for someone to watch the sport casually. Have teams play on, say, Wednesdays and Saturdays like the English soccer leagues do. Have series playoff games with a single championship game like MLS does. Make the standings that you don't have to have a PhD in math to understand. Give names of the team that instill a sense of local, historic and civic pride instead of something that 4th graders name their kickball teams.
Ultimately, it's all about gluttony, and I'm not just talking about money. Like with food, if people enjoy something, their answer is to take in more and more. Do you like hockey? Then you wish it could be played every day all year long. But there's a lot to be said for appetite and desire making the payoff more enjoyable than cramming something down your throat until you're sick and bloated.
Money is, of course, at play here as well. But as I always do in these situations, I blame the greed of the owners, not the players. The players have the talent and deserve every penny they get. The NHL players may be unrealistic in what they feel they're deserved, because they do play in a badly marketed sport that doesn't make as much money overall as the other three of the big four sports, but people always tend to blame the players because their salaries are made public. The owners are just as greedy, if not more so, and they don't have the talent...just the money to buy a team in the first place.
Belch.
11 comments:
Not to be argumentative, but I have to point some things out. For the record.
Your complaint about the length of the NHL season and playoffs is a pretty common one, but you may be surprised to hear that last year, the NHL season from opening night to the awarding of the Stanley Cup was a mere 10 days longer than the corresponding season and playoffs in the NBA. The NHL Season began on Oct 11, 2003, ended on April 4, 2004, and the Stanley Cup was presented on June 7. The NBA season began on October 29, 2003, ended on April 13, 2004, and the big trophy was given on June 15. Nobody bitches about the length of the basketball season or postseason, but it's almost identical to hockey's.
If you take into account that the Stanley Cup Finals went to seven games, as did the Eastern Conference (NHL) Finals, you know that this season took the maximum amount of games. In the NBA, the final was decided (4-1) in only five games, and each of the conference series was won (4-2) in six games, meaning that some "if necessary" games were left in hand. Had those series gone to seven games, we would see a difference of about one or two days in the length of respective seasons.
I disagree about the NHL not being a marketable product. It is highly marketable. However, it isn't marketed properly. I don't know where to point fingers about that, but I think the TV deal that Gary Bettman allowed is one place.
Your complaint about the schedule, by the way, is a bit unfounded. It isn't random at all. There's a sophisticated computer program that generates the schedule every year (just like the one in the NBA) which provides teams with as many long homestands as long road trips, and assures that each team has the same number of consecutive night games, the same number of home-and-away consecutive night games, the same number of afternoon games, and attempts to minimize travel by putting out of conference long distance road games in a single geographically convenient road trip. For instance, the Hurricanes would have had games at San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim over a four day span in December. Then later on, we would have had consecutive road games against Phoenix and Colorado. That isn't random at all. That's completely by design, and to me it's intelligent.
One thing that a lot of people are missing when they start talking about the greed of the players or the greed of the owners is that one of the things the league was trying to accomplish was instituting both a salary cap and a minimum spending amount. The purpose here isn't greed. It's trying to make the playing field a little more level. Take a team like Pittsburgh. Their payroll was barely $18 million last season, well shy of the $30 minimum that the league would like to see teams spend. Detroit spent well over the $49 million that the league wants to see. The league also wants to see revenues shared, like they do in the NFL. That way, teams like Pittsburgh wouldn't be driven to the brink of contraction. They could bulk up their payroll to get some quality players.
I also think you underestimate the casual fan. People who are interested enough to look at the standings aren't dumbfounded by them.
By the way, there is a lot wrong with hockey. They're in serious need of modifying certain aspects of the flow of the game, but I won't get into detail about that.
I'm just sayin' is all.
End of tirade.
Hooray! I was wondering when your comment would come in.
Point-by-point:
I ABSOLUTELY think that the NBA season is WAY too long. Their season, their post-season, even their pre-season is too long. This is the main reason in a big bushel full of reasons that I've lost almost all interest in the NBA. Therefore, I definitely feel that the NHL season, which you pointed out is a little bit longer, is also way too long.
You completely missed the point about the scheduling. It has absolutely nothing to do with opponents or home vs. away. It was about what DAYS they play. For the casual fan to know that almost every football game is on Sunday is a huge advantage for that sport, especially over the NBA and NHL, where the schedule isn't on regular days of the week.
I don't think people are "dumbfounded" by the standings. They're not difficult or mind-bogglingly complex. The "PhD in math" was just an exaggerated joke. But non-fans, the casual sports fans who just want to know what the standings are aren't interested in number of games played or overtime losses (or is it wins?). Who cares? It's a sport! Who won, who lost, the end. MLS has this problem as well (though not as bad as the NHL) , but the NFL and MLB are smart enough to know that the diehard fans will find plenty of stats to obsess over, whereas you'll win over casual sports fans by keeping the stats clean and simple, NOT because they're too difficult to understand, but only because it makes it easier to cut through and get the gist of the standings, keeping the casual sports fan INTERESTED.
> "one of the things the league was trying to accomplish was instituting both a salary cap and a minimum spending amount"
Then where was the breakdown? I'm guessing that it was in the same place that it always is with baseball: the bigger teams, the ones who make a lot of money, don't want to share. Sounds like greed to me.
I'm not the first person to say this stuff. I've heard plenty of complaints from people in the media and sports fans, people who like hockey and people who don't really care. The NHL has set it up for big fans of the game, people who are set up to follow the entire season closely and pay attention to stats and players. It is NOT set up for those of us interested in the game and who want to follow the general progression of the season.
As far as it's marketablity...hockey is a sport built for hockey fans to love. You're a hockey fan, so you love it. You love the expanded standings and the lenghthy playoffs. What I'm saying is that the NHL is not marketing to people like me and most of the people I know: people who are sports fans, who like the game of hockey, but who get bored by the lengthy season and the over-emphasis on stats and expanded standings. We lose interest and turn our attentions elsewhere: to March Madness and the NFL draft and the start of baseball. And in every single capitalist industry, a product that people lose interest in is marketed badly.
Curling...at least we have Curling.
NHL and NBA teams have the same number of regular season games. The schedules may be well planned, but I think what Reid meant was that it's hard for the non-die-hard fan to keep track of who plays who on any given day, or if a team is playing at all. Compare that with the NFL, where you generally know the majority of games are on Sunday afternoons, and you don't have to be a die-hard fan to keep track of the 14 or 16 matchups in a given week (or at least a majority of them).
I like hockey a lot, but I'd love to see the number of regular season games reduced drastically and scheduled on set days. Have each team play the other teams in their division twice (home and away), each of the 10 other conference teams once, and the teams from one division in the other conference once each (rotating each year like the NFL does). That's 25 games, which is plenty. Put all games on Saturday nights for 17 weeks plus Wednesday nights for the last 8 weeks. If someone asks you "is there a hockey game tonight?" you can answer simply by knowing what day it is. Plus it makes a national tv contract a lot more attractive when a network can plan on a set day and time each week. Look at NASCAR. They've been enormously successful by following the NFL model: Sunday events with the junior/lower level events on Saturdays (Bush series / college football) and Friday nights (Craftsman Trucks / High School football).
As for the standings...forget the points crap and just stick with Win percentage. So what if it's what every other sport does...there's a reason for that. It would also help to cut down on the ties by allowing more OT periods.
I won't even get into the playoffs...although I don't think their length is as bad as the fact that they start so late.
On another tangent, I would have loved to have seen ESPN/ABC/Fox step up and show more college, minor league, or national team hockey coverage. They really missed the boat.
-Scott
OK, I got distracted with work while writing that comment, so Reid beat me to the point in explaining his earlier point. Or something like that.
-Scott
No apologies, Scott. You said it much better than I did.
btw, Blogger changed the commenting you can put your name in the header now, so you don't have to post as "Anonymous" anymore. I mean, if that's what you want.
You mean like this?
So *that's* what the "Other" option is for. Good to know...I mainly just didn't want to have to sign up for an account and have to remember another password.
I think the fact that hockey doesn't take "days off" contributes to its marketability. What I mean is, pro football is played mostly on Sunday and Monday. Holidays and late season, you have some thursday or saturday games, but you know that you're never going to see an NFL game on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday. Except for Thanksgiving, you won't see one on Thursday,either. Baseball generally takes Monday off. There's usually only two or three games on the schedule. With hockey,and with basketball, there's games every night. The NBA has a wonderful TV deal that assures that their product is on the TV every night. Hockey, however, doesn't. They get a Wednesday night game on ESPN2, the All-Star game, and a couple of Saturday matchups on ABC (after the All-star break). That's it in the United States. While there are hockey games being played and not being shown, ESPN2 is off covering high school ping-pong tournaments. That's one of the failures of Gary Bettman as commissioner of the NHL. If you're just a "casual fan" you wouldn't really care who was playing as long as there was a game on. But there isn't.
As a side...
The NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement is set to expire in June. So far, no word on a renewal, and they appear to be at a bit of a standstill. I wonder how that will play out. Gary Bettman used to work for David Stern. Now it's time for one of them to set the example for the other.
yeah, the teams have their own tv deals, some of them running through the foxsports regional deal. as far as i know, every team has their own network, but those games are only shown in those markets. Not regionally like college basketball. just in that particular market. Fox sports south, for example shows hurricanes games in this market and thrashers games in the atlanta market. It isn't the same as the way fox and cbs have regional coverage of football, though. the broadcasters aren't employed by the network or the league. they're employed by the team. if you live in a market without a team, no hockey on tv. of course you can always sign up for the nhl center ice package on digital cable or satellite.
All of this is completely separate from the cruddy tv deal the league has with nbc and with espn.
I agree Christian, remember the shortened NBA season a few years ago? That was probably the most exciting NBA season in a long time - because it felt like every game absolutely counted for a team to go to the playoffs...which was more NFL/College Football/College Basketball-esque. It helped for me that Tim Duncan and the Spurs won the championship, but still, it was exciting.
Dave, I think the "no days off" thing makes the sport seem tougher, and it definitely allows more revenue opportunities for the teams (without having to resort to NFL prices), but the way it's currently done is overkill. If they're going to have teams play "x" times per week, schedule the games on the same set days every week, and have every team play on those days. It's too confusing when on any particular day some teams have games while others don't. (This bothers me with MLB too, since sometimes teams have Mondays off, sometimes Thursdays instead, but it's not consistent...granted they have rain-outs to deal with, which makes it more complex.) This would also mean that at any given point during the season, all teams have played the same number of games, so you don't have to "pro-rate" the standings. Additionally, they could designate one day of the week for divisional matchups, another for conference, another for non-conference, etc. (Would require some exceptions since there are 5 teams in a division, but you get the point.) This makes it really easy on the fan. Right now, if I want to watch/go to a Caps game, I have no idea if they're even playing without first checking the schedule. If I knew they always played on Tuesday nights, I'd only have to find out whether they're home or away, if I wanted to go to the game. If I wanted to watch it on tv, the only factor would be whether they were playing in a different time zone. If I only really cared about seeing them play the Hurricanes, I'd know that it would be a Friday night game, if Friday was the Divisional game day.
The point is the more games there are, the more structure is needed. I know if I want to watch a Ravens game that the majority of their games are on Sundays at 1 pm. With the Caps (or Orioles for that matter), it takes a lot more effort to catch a game.
I'm actually hoping the next NBA season gets cancelled. Since I basically detest pro basketball, I'd love to see the air time and sports pages reallocated to the NCAA and (hopefully) the NHL. But that's just me.
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