Alex Shehata is a 24-year old from Winthrop, Maine, located 10 miles outside the state capital of Augusta. He grew up with a love for sports that carried over into a pursuit in sports broadcasting. He recently received a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Maine-Orono and currently works as a board operator for select Portland Sea Dogs (Boston Red Sox AA-affiliate) games. Pending acceptance, he plans on continuing his education at the UGA or Northeastern. When the National Hockey League and the NHL Players Association canceled the 2004-05 season, it looked as though it was the end of hockey in the United States as we know it. Three years later, I, along with many others, couldn't have been more wrong and happier.
A league lockout is never a good situation for any sport, as we saw with Major League Baseball in 1994 and the struggle to win its fans back. In the United States, for a sport that seemed to be falling in line with the likes of soccer, as far as popularity is concerned, the fallout tends to be magnified.
Hockey has a hard enough time competing during the same season with collegiate and professional basketball and, prior to the lockout, casual fans of hockey didn't need to be given a reason not to watch. ESPN dropped its telecasts of NHL games and seemed to forget to show highlights during Sports Center altogether.
Fortunately, for true hockey fans, the league front office did something right for once. They focused on getting people into the stands following the settlement of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. In order to do so, it was necessary to improve the on-ice product, and they did that by eliminating the clutching-and-grabbing style of hockey opened up the ice to expose real hockey talent. With the likes of Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin coming onto the scene, the change couldn't have come at a better time.
The cliché about hockey, "You have to see it in person," took on a whole new meaning. With the 2007-08 regular season over, attendance numbers are up two percent from last season and up 6.7 percent since 2003-04, the final season before the lockout. Each year since the lockout, the NHL has seen a rise in attendance numbers league wide, so much so that the Florida Panthers were last in the league this past year filling its arena at 80.2 percent capacity for the entire season. To put this into perspective, the lowest attendance by capacity before the lockout was the Chicago Blackhawks at a measly 64.6%.
More importantly, 26 games into playoffs, it doesn't matter if you watch the game in person or on television, fans are happy with what they see and want more of it. Versus, which took over the broadcast rights following the lockout, is reporting a 33% increase in viewership over regular season numbers. Although that is still a low base of viewers compared to other sports, the news is positive for the future of the NHL.
One doesn't need to look far beyond the numbers to find out why hockey is enjoying so much success. The first round of the 2007-08 playoffs was the best that the league has seen in the past decade. Old rivalries were renewed, with the likes of the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens facing off against one another. It was the 31st time these two met each other in the playoffs, the most of any sport, and took on the atmosphere of a New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox matchup.
In addition, the cross-town rivalry between the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils built upon their hatred for each other, which started with a Game 7 victory by the Rangers in the '94 Eastern Conference Final on their way to their first Stanley Cup in
54 years.
Regionally, you had the Philadelphia Flyers and the rejuvenated Washington Capitals, who were led by their superstar winger Alexander Ovechkin. The Capitals wouldn't have made the playoffs if not for Ovechkin carrying the team on his back in a late season push to over take the Carolina Hurricanes for sole possession of first place in the Southeast conference. So far this post-season, Game 7 between the Flyers and Capitals drew the highest television rating of any game, including Game 7 of the Bruins-Canadiens series.
Round two is just under way, but the trend is continuing with old friends in the Detroit Red Wings taking on the Colorado Avalanche. It is a series that has seen bench brawls, coaches screaming at each other inches apart, and goalies fighting with the intensity of Ali-Frazier.
The commissioner of the NHL, Gary Bettman, can be criticized for a lot of things, especially the way he handled the CBA and the eventual lockout. But, one thing he believed in was his sport and its fans. He knew what the fans wanted to see and had a vision for what the NHL should look like. So for that he deserves kudos for executing that plan and bringing the fans back in record numbers.
The road is still a long and winding one for the NHL, but there is no doubt that if the path continues, it will become more popular than it once was in the late 1990s. Television ratings will increase as the NHL marketing machine enjoys the benefits of star talent in Evgeni Malkin, Crosby and Ovechkin. Fans will cram into arenas in record numbers and the NHL will once again be considered one of the four major sports. Until that day, let's sit back and enjoy what we have now as the best sport in the world.