| Where's The Love?
By Patryk Fournier April 14, 2003 |
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There is a clear sign of trouble when the Arena Football League has better TV ratings than you. The NHL is having an astonishingly tough time connecting with US viewers and sports fans, but why? What makes hockey so unappealing to the US? How can hockey be viewed as the social fabric of one country and simply an afterthought for Canada's southern neighbour? These are the questions that I've had for quite some time. After some careful thought and cross-examination with other sports I think I've found the root answer to these questions.
Americans love a winner. They celebrate and embrace champions. They glorify individual performances and thrive to create heroes, role models, icons and idols. The US is considered a super power in the world of amateur and professional sports because the underlying notion is that winning is everything. Results don't lie. The US is constantly among the leaders in Olympic competition and participates and hosts the most renown and revered professional leagues in the world. The most popular sports in the US are ones in which the Americans dominate collectively or individually: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Golf, Racing (NASCAR) and even Tennis, to a lesser extent. Each of these sports has a long and cherished past decorated by champions and record performances. Baseball is known as America's pastime and has developed such heroes as Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Willie Mays to name just a few. Basketball has given the US public Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Football has created an endless amount of sporting heroes: Walter Payton, Jim Brown, Brett Favre, Joe Montana, Dan Marino and John Elway. Golf has seen a block of great players in various generations: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. The world of NASCAR is adored by die-hard fans and even after the loss of the greatest hero of them all, Dale Earnhardt, the sports still thrives because of a cast that includes Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The real question is does the NHL have the same collection of US-born heroes? Has there ever been a US-born Michael Jordan or Mickey Mantle type athlete to play hockey? The US has developed some tremendous hockey players, the current list includes: Mike Modano, Jeremy Roenick, John Leclair, Mike Richter and Brian Leetch. These players will be Hall of Famers but none of these players reach the same stratosphere that Lemieux, Gretzky, Orr, Roy and Howe have reached. Even the retired list of US-born players pales in comparison to the greats of the game. Pat Lafontaine and Joe Mullen were good players but are nowhere near the level of icon status. In order for hockey to flourish in the US a hero needs to emerge, a player who transcends the sport, who can be an ambassador for the game, a player who wins scoring titles, Hart Trophies and Stanley Cups. A player who can be a role model and generate interest in the game of hockey the way Tiger Woods has done for golf. And most importantly a player who is American. When that player emerges the US will have someone they can embrace and cherish as a sporting icon. The love for that player will transcend to a love for hockey as a whole. Only then will hockey receive the same mainstream attention and support that other sports currently profit from.
If the popularity of the NHL in the US rests on the emergence on a US-born hockey hero then the only questions left are where and when will that player emerge? How are great players born? The answer to these questions lay in the current state of the game and more specifically the current cast of great players. Patrick Roy's exploits in the 80's and 90's in Montreal created a goaltending boom in the province of Quebec. Current NHL goalies that grew up idolizing Roy include: Roberto Luongo, Jose Theodore, Patrick Lalime and J.S. Giguere. Had Roy not played for the Canadiens who knows if the French-Canadian goaltending boom would have actualized? The emergence of a US-born star will likely come from geographic regions that are currently occupied by great players. Here are the most likely candidates and areas: Detroit and Steve Yzerman/Niklas Lidstrom, Colorado and Joe Sakic/Peter Forsberg, Dallas and Mike Modano, New York and Brian Leetch/Mike Richter and finally Pittsburgh and Mario Lemieux. Pittsburgh may be starting a trend that will emerge over the years with the result of the 2001 Entry draft. R.J. Umberger, a local Pittsburgh native started playing hockey because he idolized Mario Lemieux. Umberger became the first ever Pittsburgh native taken in the first round when the Canucks used their 16th overall spot in the 1st round to select the young Lemieux fan. Umberger commented on the state of hockey in Pittsburgh prior to the 2001draft, "Hockey is definitely getting a lot better," he said. "There are a lot of guys right behind me in school who grew up Mario Lemieux fans and are playing now, too. I'm already starting to run into some of them all over the country."
The popularity and mainstream acceptance of hockey in the US is important because the economic state of the NHL depends on it. The NHL has a horrible national TV contract especially when compared to the deals other leagues have. I did some number crunching and found out that the NHL's national TV deals provide each team in the league with roughly $6.6 million. The league generates $200 million dollars per year as a whole but that figure becomes significantly less when divided by 30 NHL clubs. By comparison the NFL's TV deals bring each team approximately $68.75 million per year. That's about 10 times the amount that an NHL club receives. (These figures are all in US funds and don't include regional contracts that teams may have). Of course the NHL can't get a better TV contract until the demand is there. That demand can be improved with the emergence of the next US sporting icon.
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