Great Time For NHL

I hate how people dislike the NHL simply because they don't understand it or never played hockey. It's become such an easy target to trash (kind of like Britney Spears). However, the key difference between the NHL and Britney Spears is that Britney deserves it.

The reason most people dislike it is because they aren't as experienced with hockey as they are with sports like football. But many people who never played football still love it (me). What seperates it from hockey is not the content of the sport, but the publicity it gets. Sportscenter and other shows on ESPN are competely centered around the NFL. Whether it's my boy John Clayton running around finding breaking news, or expert Sean Salisbury telling us how a quarterback looks off a saftey to find single coverage for the 273rd time, football gets a ton of coverage.

Hockey doesn't have that luxury, and lately it's been even worse. ESPN did not renew the TV contract with the NHL after the lockout and commissioner Gary Bettman was forced to sign with Versus, a channel most people don't even get. There's a spiral effect because since the NHL isn't being shown on ESPN a few nights a week, they rarely show highlights of the games on sportscenter. One or two nights a week they bring in Barry Melrose for 5 minutes to talk about the league's highlights, but 4 of those minutes are usually spent making fun of Barry's mullet and pinstripe suit.

The decrease in scoring before the lockout led to a decrease in popularity. Then the league really shot itself in the foot by cancelling an entire season on us. For the most part, the new rule changes they made have really proved to make the game more exciting for the casual fan and new fans. But the damage the league suffered from like '99 to '05 was just horrible and led to the decrease in popularity and publicity for the league. Now that the game play is exciting, a slew of hot young players are in the league, youth hockey is increasing, and the Versus TV contract will expire soon, hopefully we will get back with ESPN and NBC programming daily and get the league headed to a height that we've never seen before. And it starts with the playoffs tonight.

Everybody loves playoffs in all sports. Fuck it, I would watch a mahjong playoff series between a group of 86 year old asian women. Playoffs are exciting; they're great. The greatness of athletics culminate in the playoffs. This year the NHL playoffs are going to be even more exciting because of the competitive matchups in pretty much every series. The intensity will be up. It's going to be great end to end, sacrifice the body hockey. I can't wait for my Rangers to go deep this year. I can't wait for all the games. When sportscenter is forced to show all the amazing finishes and crazy moments that are about to occur, people won't be able to help but get into it. And the ensuing increase in popularity will be used to get the NHL back on national TV almost every night. What a great time for hockey.

In fact, if the NHL was a publically traded stock, I would highly recommend buying some right now. Actually it might be. I should really go look into that. I am a finance major.