NHL Still suffering from the lockout?

[David]

After the opening round of fixtures, Detroit failed to sellout for the first time in 10 years! The Joe Lewis arena was only 2/3rds full. The league seems to be suffering from too many teams, especially teams that aren't hockey hotbeds & some of the top players not visiting some cities. Players like Crosby should be playing in every NHL arena. That will pull in the crowds! Possibly ten teams too many I feel.

[paek]

The league seriously needs to get the penalty situation looked out as it's becoming a clone of the NBA where players can't touch one another without getting a minor.

I'm all for the skilled players dancing around the 4th liners and the goons, but last night's game between Toronto and Ottawa was ruined by the referees calling penalty after penalty. It was the same in London last weekend.

As for expansion, it's wittled down the talent pool but the league can't simply uproot franchises that are in non-hockey hotbeds & transfer them to areas which would naturally support a team.

Bettman's an idiot.

[Peacock]

Bettman has seen 4 new teams into the League. The others were agreed before he was in charge.

Also he saved NHL Hockey in Canada when the Canadian Dollar was very weak. He convinced US-based teams to donate to a fund to keep the remaining Canadian franchises afloat.

Also, I believe that teh NHL Board of Governors has to approve any changes that come out of the NHL Offices, so it's not always fair to criticise Bettman.

[paek]

It is easy to criticise Bettman, he is the head of the NHL and the NHL at this moment in time is a joke.

NFL all the way.

[Dan]

paek said:

The league seriously needs to get the penalty situation looked out as it's becoming a clone of the NBA where players can't touch one another without getting a minor.

I'm all for the skilled players dancing around the 4th liners and the goons, but last night's game between Toronto and Ottawa was ruined by the referees calling penalty after penalty. It was the same in London last weekend.

As for expansion, it's wittled down the talent pool but the league can't simply uproot franchises that are in non-hockey hotbeds & transfer them to areas which would naturally support a team.

Bettman's an idiot.

I've got to agree Paek.

There's zero tolerance, and then there's ridiculous. Call every hook for sure, but don't call it for every time the stick touches an opposing player!

After some time to think, I don't like the shootout much either, just call it a draw!

[paek]

upshall said:

paek said:

The league seriously needs to get the penalty situation looked out as it's becoming a clone of the NBA where players can't touch one another without getting a minor.

I'm all for the skilled players dancing around the 4th liners and the goons, but last night's game between Toronto and Ottawa was ruined by the referees calling penalty after penalty. It was the same in London last weekend.

As for expansion, it's wittled down the talent pool but the league can't simply uproot franchises that are in non-hockey hotbeds & transfer them to areas which would naturally support a team.

Bettman's an idiot.

I've got to agree Paek.

There's zero tolerance, and then there's ridiculous. Call every hook for sure, but don't call it for every time the stick touches an opposing player!

After some time to think, I don't like the shootout much either, just call it a draw!

Absolutely.

The notion of shoot outs for regular season games is just lame and doesn't make it more exciting for the fans at all. Shoot outs are just an Americanism.

[Dan]

Unfortunately, it's a sport that mainly takes place in America

[sunbeam]

This is a summary of what was said on Around The Horn:

DET failed to sell-out for the first time in 396 games,
First time the Avs failed to sell out their opener in team history,
Ticket prices rose 6% last year despite the strike cutting salaries by 20%,
Tix are soaking the fans coz there's zero money coming from tv,
In 10 years the NHL might be dead,
Versus tv is channel that is not broadcast in half the USA,
Crosby should be a star but instead is almost unknown,
The idea of expansion is laughible,
The NHL is no longer a mainstream sport,
Desperately need new marketing,
Bettman needs to tell the owners to reshape the schedule so that the likes of Crosby play in cities like Dallas,
Sad state of affairs.

Should be said that's the second time I've seen hockey discussed on the show in the last two or three months. The first time they ridiculed the London trip. Now remember ATH is on 5 times a week and covers 8 topics a day.

Similarly on Pardon The Interuption they wondered if the NHL has a deathwish. Last weekend you had the close to the MLB regular season, College Football and the NFL. On Wed you hd the start of the MLB play offs. On Tues there was no baseball or gridiron.

So the NHL started the season on the weekend in London and on Wed in the USA. No play on Tuesday.

October 4, 2007

BY DREW SHARP

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Sprinkle red roses over the grave.

The myth of Hockeytown officially passed away Wednesday.

Advertisement


Historians will mark the time of death at 7:44 p.m., at the conclusion of the first period, when at least a third of Joe Louis Arena sat empty on the evening of the regular-season opener with the defending Stanley Cup champions as the honored guests.

There was little, if any, foot traffic heading down the aisles. The late arrivals had already arrived.

Some club officials desperately sought false comfort, believing the masses of empty red seats were the result of ticket buyers staying home.

That's a valid explanation when Columbus makes its 22nd visit of the season and it's only December. But this was the season's first game against the foe that bounced the Wings out of the playoffs last spring.

There's clearly a disconnection between the Wings and a fan base that once crossed the border into blind obsession.

Wednesday's game snapped a streak of 396 consecutive regular-season sellouts -- dating to Dec. 10, 1996. That was the season that culminated in the Wings' first Stanley Cup in 42 years, as they embarked on a decade-long run of sustained excellence.

"It's more than a little disappointing," Nicklas Lidstrom said after the Wings outlasted Anaheim in an exciting overtime shoot-out.

There was a time when only two words were required from the Wings come October -- "We're back!" -- and this city would fall all over itself in unabashed exhilaration. But there's now heated competition for the city's heart as well as its entertainment dollar, and the Wings seem ill prepared for battle.

They made 200 tickets in the corners of the upper bowl available for $9 every game. There were some still available if you checked online an hour before face-off. That was the only ticket price adjustment made.

Despite the Wings' sustained success, they've nonetheless fallen to fourth place among the city's four professional sports entities.

The NHL should worry. If Hockeytown doesn't come out en masse to celebrate the opening of another season, what does that say about the overall state of the league?

Michigan's poor economy has certainly curtailed discretionary spending, but tighter family finances didn't keep people from filling Comerica Park in record numbers this summer. The Lions' 3-1 start isn't an applicable reason because they've always sold out Ford Field, even when their seasons ended come the start of October. The average cost of a Pistons individual game ticket this season is eight dollars more than a single-game Wings ticket.

General manager Ken Holland believes a residual resentment remains from the owners' lockout three years ago. If you take away something once thought irreplaceable, and people comfortably adjust to life without it, they no longer consider it essential when it returns.

"I can't believe that would be the case here in Detroit," Lidstrom said. "It certainly helped that we were the only team for awhile there. But the Tigers have had a great run the last two years, and I think they're stealing some of our fans to their side."

But there's also a much less North American appearance to this team, especially after Steve Yzerman's retirement a year ago and Brendan Shanahan's exodus to Broadway. The Wings still boast more than their share of world-class skill, with Lidstrom and young cornerstones Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. But this has become a Euro-dominated team, and it's quite possible the lack of prominent Canadian or American stars may have had an adverse effect.

"I do think that Steve's retirement after being here for so long and being the face of hockey here might have chased some people away," Lidstrom added.

Maybe if the Wings had marketed Anaheim's appearance as the long-awaited seventh game of the Western Conference finals. But, then, the Wings couldn't regularly sell out their playoff games, either.

Despite 16 straight playoff appearances, the longest current consecutive postseason streak in professional sports, the Wings must still earn the fans' affection because now there's competition. The fans are not unlike the wife happily married for 16 years yet nonetheless feeling unappreciated, begging her husband to woo her as though they were in the initial courtship stage.

Hockey is no longer the obsession it once was in Detroit, and it's time for team management to stop buying its own marketing hype and seek practical solutions for getting Joe Louis Arena filled once again.

www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071004/COL08/710040439/1053/SPORTS

[Dan]

Resign Bettman, resign.

[paek]

"but this has become a Euro-dominated team, and it's quite possible the lack of prominent Canadian or American stars may have had an adverse effect..."

If that's accurate, then that says more about the American public than anything else. Arsenal have a high contingent of Euorpean players but it doesn't turn off the Gooners' faithful.

As a frequent contributor to a Canadian Leafs site, I have to admit that xenophobia IS prevalent towards European players from NA fans.

[David]

paek said:

"

As a frequent contributor to a Canadian Leafs site, I have to admit that xenophobia IS prevalent towards European players from NA fans.

Which site is that, out of interest?