Gary Bettman's NHL: Too Big, And In The Wrong Cities

In the late 1970's, the NBA Finals were shown on CBS ... on tape delay. Believe it. This was the league's place, before Larry Bird and Magic Johnson joined -- conveniently located on each of the two coasts, and even more conveniently with two of the NBA's most storied franchises. How the Lakers and Celtics snagged the picks to select those two players would be wonderful stories, indeed.

Anyhow, with those two players as star power, and with their teams facing each other almost every year in the Finals, the league was resuscitated.

The NHL, a case could be made, is at least as bad off as the NBA was, pre-Bird and Magic. Their finals aren't shown on tape delay, but what's worse -- tape delay on CBS, or live on ... Versus?

Gary Bettman's league, too large and in too many cities that don't give a puck about hockey, is in trouble. Big trouble. When ESPN tells you thanks, but no thanks -- and because they feel they could do better by showing poker and volleyball -- and when you're paying NBC for air time, and when arenas are becoming more and more occupied by empty seats, and when you have an unbalanced schedule that keeps the young superstars out of big money cities (like Detroit) ... well, you're not exactly the darling of pro team sports. You're not the NBA, in other words, post-Bird and Magic.

The NHL was lulled into a false sense of security in the 1990's, when upstarts like the Florida Panthers and San Jose Sharks scored playoff upsets (the Panthers made it all the way to the Finals, in 1996), and attendance in those cities, and others, benefitted from the novelty factor. So Bettman got greedy, and placed franchises in Atlanta and Phoenix (via Winnipeg), and more recently, Nashville and Columbus. Cities whose denizens are probably prone to asking how the pucks get inflated.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, unable to be saved by the famous owner Mario Lemieux, might not be much longer for the Steel City. They need a new arena, badly, but the city is unwilling to spring for one. So in the age old threat, the team might go somewhere else -- to some city who WILL afford them a shiny new hockey building. Kansas City has been mentioned (tried and failed in the mid-1970's).

Ice hockey is, whether we choose to admit it or not in Detroit, a niche sport. It's best sold to cold weather climates, and in places where there aren't too many distractions. And how many of those cities are there, anymore? The NHL, under Bettman, enjoyed for a while expansion with impunity. The league enjoyed spreading the joy of big league ice hockey all over the continental United States. Bettman played Johnny Appleseed, and it worked for a bit. But to use another fable as an example, Gary Bettman's NHL is like this: he's the pied piper of Hamlin, only when he stops playing long enough to see how many people are following him, the only thing he runs into is his own shadow.

A fading shadow.