Why the NHL fails as a league.

FatTony · Jun 2, 2007

They know ahead of time that if there's a game played in the NBA today, it'll be at night, so why schedule their game at night???? Why compete with the NBA playoffs when you could have a Saturday day game and compete with nothing but baseball? Most bars will have the NBA on tonight instead of the Stanley Cup which is BS. They can't compete with basketball right now so why try?

They're trying to build up the fan base and they had the game on the other night on the VS channel (which some people don't even have.) and that was watched by a whopping 500,000 households in the US.

500,000 households!!!!!! Yippee.

They should let NBC have every game for near nothing if they want to survive and time it right.

Donnybasbl · Jun 2, 2007

Doesn't NBC have tennis on all day today?

-Slim- · Jun 2, 2007

The NHL doesnt have more fans cause Its damn difficult to see the puck clearly..they should make it bigger

lander · Jun 2, 2007

Slim,
You a big FOX Trax fan? I'd rather have the games on CBC only before I had to watch that stupid blue streak again.

I think the NHL's biggest problem is they've put themselves in so many non-hockey cities. Nashville, Miami, Phoenix??? C'mmon .. a little kid could figure out that just doesn't make sense. I'm surprised Tampa has embraced their team so well, but that's debatablely because there are so many transplants in that area - still, 1 for X is a disaster. Time to accept that it's not going to touch NFL, NBA, MLB or NASCAR for that matter anytime soon and put the sport back in cities where it will be embraced.

bilbal · Jun 2, 2007

It's "Hockey Night" in Canada so that would be akin to moving Monday Night Football to 3pm. The canuks would go ka-nuts and there will be more people watching up there than down here anyway.

The NHL isn't succesful because they just don't market their product effectively. When the NHL chose to broadcast on Versus instead of ESPN, they really shot themselves in the skate. Versus has been a complete disaster for the NHL, bad broadcasters, bad broadcasting, bad marketing, bad everything.

I'm not even going to get into how badly Bettman has failed at his job, I think he's currently proposing an expansion team or moving a current team to Las Vegas, another city where nobody gives a rat's ass about hockey.

gtc08 · Jun 2, 2007

523,000 people watched game 2, .7 share. WWE, fake wrestling gets a2.6 for monday's broadcast. the nhl is not a real sports league if it gets out drawn by fake wrestling. and it doesnt have a world following because other leagues are arguably as good outside of the us excluding canada. compare that to nba where in china some 400 million people are watching the series going on right now.

Rude · Jun 2, 2007

Here are some reasons:

1. To many teams in American cities that don't know or want hockey.
2. To many teams. Talent pool is so thin because of to many teams
3. NHL has to compete with Nascar, NCAA sports, along with all the other big 3 pro sports, so hockey doesn't get any media/fan attention. Here in Canada the NHL rules, hence "Hockey Night In Canada" We can thank the American NHL clowns who run the league for killing it for us.
4. The more we cater to the American non-NHL fan, the more us Canadian get pissed off and start to not care. (Unless our Home team is involved)

I could go on forever.... Bottom line is cut the league down 5-6 teams and market the sport in cities that have a tradition with Hockey. What the league is trying to do with hockey in the states, is like us trying to push beach volleyball in Winnipeg. Could work, but in the long run everyone loses.

Plain and simple, the current leaders of the NHL are killing the game. Thanks A- Holes! :bigfinger

crunch99 · Jun 2, 2007

They could have it on opposite Saturday Night's Main Event and it would still lose!!!!!!

TomBrady#1 · Jun 2, 2007

Very good point. NHL like MLB is lacking in leadership.

docmercer · Jun 2, 2007

gtc08 said:
523,000 people watched game 2, .7 share. WWE, fake wrestling gets a2.6 for monday's broadcast. the nhl is not a real sports league if it gets out drawn by fake wrestling. .

Did you get turned down for a date when you asked out a hockey player at some point? You have this obsession with a league which pays its top stars 7+ million a year and sells out 95% of the seats in 30 markets as "not a real league".

You compare that to the pseudo-gay WWE which markets itself as basically a real life cartoon (as reflected by the demographic that attends and watches on TV)

Put wrestling in 30 arenas 40 times a year and then see how the Sunday Steroid Slam does for ratings each week.

By your definition - Do You Think You Can Dance is more of a sport than NBA since it has outdrawn many NBA games this year.

MattRain · Jun 2, 2007

There were 2.63 million watching game 1 on CBC, and I'm still looking for the RDS (French TSN) numbers, which has to be around a million.

That's why the game isn't being played at some random-ass hour in the afternoon. Canada is watching, and Saturday afternoon hockey is a total blasphemy to actual hockey fans.

Go back to your basketball people. :youmad:

FairWarning · Jun 2, 2007

bilbal said:
It's "Hockey Night" in Canada so that would be akin to moving Monday Night Football to 3pm. The canuks would go ka-nuts and there will be more people watching up there than down here anyway.

The NHL isn't succesful because they just don't market their product effectively. When the NHL chose to broadcast on Versus instead of ESPN, they really shot themselves in the skate. Versus has been a complete disaster for the NHL, bad broadcasters, bad broadcasting, bad marketing, bad everything.

I'm not even going to get into how badly Bettman has failed at his job, I think he's currently proposing an expansion team or moving a current team to Las Vegas, another city where nobody gives a rat's ass about hockey.

Actually Vegas would care if the right team with star-appeal came in (Pitt would have been perfect). Bettman has done the impossible - he made Bud Selig look like a real commissioner.

FatTony · Jun 2, 2007

Matt Rain said:
There were 2.63 million watching game 1 on CBC, and I'm still looking for the RDS (French TSN) numbers, which has to be around a million.

That's why the game isn't being played at some random-ass hour in the afternoon. Canada is watching, and Saturday afternoon hockey is a total blasphemy to actual hockey fans.

Go back to your basketball people. :youmad:

And the league will go back to making less money. There's a reason they're hoping it makes it in the US.

FairWarning · Jun 2, 2007

Fat Tony said:
And the league will go back to making less money. There's a reason they're hoping it makes it in the US.

Sucks for the Canadians but the league knows they will watch the finals at any hour. Issue I have is the markets of Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, and Cleveland are untapped, but the league wastes money on the southern teams.

FatTony · Jun 2, 2007

FairWarning said:
Sucks for the Canadians but the league knows they will watch the finals at any hour. Issue I have is the markets of Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, and Cleveland are untapped, but the league wastes money on the southern teams.

Those do seem like the markets they should be in. I don't know what they were thinking in regard to the newer, weaker markets they have now. I guess they were trying not to alienate an area of the country making more of a broader fan base praying it would take off. Who knows?

Hope1 · Jun 2, 2007

Tom Brady#1 said:
Very good point. NHL like MLB is lacking in leadership.

bingo

its leader is THE most incompetent commissioner in sport. They hired an American basketball man to run the NHL? :missingte

hey, who will open next weeks thread on 'why the NHL stinks', 'why is this league here', "i cant see the puck'?

:missingte

GO DUCKS!!!!!!

Dr.Knowitall · Jun 2, 2007

Maybe Hockey should start running their league like the WWE and the NBA and start writing scripts so that the league superstars end up in the finals every year. That seems to work for the NBA and the NFL and NASCAR and of course the WWE.

Hockey is 1 of the true sports leagues left that fans know the games are not rigged.

Look at Cleveland and the new Jordan (james) The league had to cheat to get them to the next level because of the leagues decision to make James the next superstar. A forced superstar like all the rest before him.

If you like fake sports you have the NBA and the NFL and the WWE. Americans seem to not mind that their sports have been hijacked by people who could careless if the games are real or not. Hockey doesn't have this problem!

Hockey has no problem unless you're an idiot American who has to have his favorite player win every year or it's no fun.

And alot more than 500,000 people watched game 2 in America. There's no way only 1/2 a million people watched this game. But you people will believe anything.

If you don't like hockey don't watch it. Some people just don't like fake sports! For those people there is hockey!

Wallace didn't get fouled before king James made the game winner? Detroit should have been up by 2 when James made that last shot. But watch your phony games and keep blasting a league that refuses to reduce itself to that level just to thrive.

docmercer · Jun 2, 2007

FairWarning said:
Actually Vegas would care if the right team with star-appeal came in (Pitt would have been perfect). Bettman has done the impossible - he made Bud Selig look like a real commissioner.

And if the star gets injured? Does that mean it's a bad market?

The league needs to relocate teams (if possible) to markets like Minn/St Paul and Columbus. There's 5-10 here without a franchise in the US that enjoy the sport enough to support it during good and lean years.

docmercer · Jun 2, 2007

Fat Tony said:
And the league will go back to making less money. There's a reason they're hoping it makes it in the US.

Same reason NBA and NFL are exploring the idea of expanding into Europe. Can't be happy just working on the product...have to go after those expansion dollars.

Number_9 · Jun 2, 2007

I totally agree with KTV. I don't understand why people seem to define failure differently when it comes to the NHL. This is a league with revenues of over $2 Billion, an average salary well over $1 Million, drew 20 million fans last year, has thirty teams, every game is on television, has the most affluent and educated fans, national TV deals, and on and on. I don't get it. Even if all those numbers were halved, the NHL would still be a staggering success. It's like having Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Sam Walton, and Michael Bloomberg in a room together, and then calling Bloomberg a failure because he's the "poorest" of the four. It's ludicrous.

:ughhh:

-#9