Saturday's NHL on NBC fiasco

Most people are long gone from baseball before a curveball is even thrown. Relatively few people play football on a level organized enough to be as violent as college and pro football are.

 

You're missing the point.

A 13 year old can throw a curveball. I'm assuming there are lots of kids still playing at that age. .

My kids played summer football--17-20 year olds..."violence" is relative.

If you NEVER played hockey--or learned to skate for that matter--you don't know squat about the skill required to play at the NHL level. And so, it's sorta ho-hum to watch.

One of my favorite games to watch (when it's on TV) is squash. Why? Because I played it for about 20 years and was relatively good at it. I KNOW how tough those drop shots are and how fast that ball moves and how tight it is in the court. If you never played, it's just two guys banging a ball around.

 

Having played hockey certainly gives you a greater appreciation for the difficulty and grace of the sport, but it's not a factor in the sport's popularity (or lack there of) in the States.

Along similar lines, you don't have to have played a musical instrument to want to drop dollars on a concert, have sung in the choir to spend at the opera or enjoyed painting to want to visit an art museum.

You do those things because they seem like they will be an enjoyable experience and use of your time and you're drawn to them through gaining an awareness of that enjoyment, via a wide range of things, like advertising, word of mouth, etc.

The NHL fails here because they aren't even at Chapter 1 of the building awareness manual.

 

Captain,

I agree.

But they've working on the "building awareness manual" for over 40 years.

Back in the 60's ABC or CBS showed Saturday afternoon games.

The game has everything a sports nut could like: speed and violence but it's never caught on.

I'm looking for an answer and I don't know what it is.

It could be as simple as there are no great American hockey players.

Good ones, terrific ones, but nobody in the Lemieux, Gretzky, Crosby, Jagr mold.

 

Hockey doesn't work as well because the speed of the game doesn't translate well to TV.
If they;d use a lot more overhead looks and try Sky-Cam to flow along with the action, I think it'd help.

 

I'm not sure the speed of many games translates well to TV.

On TV, a pitch looks like it takes forever to reach the plate.

On TV, it looks like women's tennis and men's tennis are only slightly different.

On TV, you don't really get a true perspective of the mayhem at work when a defensive line is rushing the passer.

And on TV, soccer looks like a slow game.

Well, TV does get some things right.

 

Yeah, you're right.

Speed is what hockey is all about and I'm not sure TV will ever capture it.

The other thing TV doesn't capture is how big the players are and how little room there is on the ice.

Like all sports though, if you capture the imaginations of the kids, they'll turn into fans.

Problem is the cost at the youth level: it's the most expensive sport for kids to play.
Even to outfit a 10 year old is going to set you back several hundred bucks--and you have to upgrade practically every other year.

And registration is expensive because of ice-time costs. Even house league will set you back a minimum of $500.00. Elite, up to $3,000.

 

The other thing I forgot to put in my earlier post.
Gary Bettman always said HDTV would help the NHL catch on, however, HDNet is the only one who can frame the action for HDTV, unlike NBC and VS, who still have to do it for the 4:3 audience.
That being said, HDNet isn't really deviating much off traditional coverage, and I think that's a disservice to both the game and the HD viewer.

 

It's not just the speed -- I don't think any aspect of the game translates well on TV. It's an amazing sport live, but you really have to know the game well to follow it on TV. Part of that is that you frequently can't see the puck on television. If you know the sport you know where it is, but if you don't know it well you're lost.

It is infinitely better in HD, but it still doesn't translate as well as other televised sports.

 

If you never skated, don't understand the mechanics or rules of the game or the skills required -- why would you watch it? It's a bunch of anonymous guys in helmets and pads, with names you can't pronounce and faces you'd never recognize playing a game you just don't get.
There's no way to solve that and it gets worse the further south you go.

In Canada, we grow up on it. We play it until it passes us by for a while, put the gear away, and then go back to it in middle age and play it again. But we appreciate those who play it well, can make great plays at high speed, because the majority of us can't do it, but wish we could. Kids who don't have that background will never "get" it -- and that's why it will never be anything but a niche sport in the States

 

As a novice hockey fan (I don't know much about the game, but love watching it), the biggest trouble I have is getting a sense of momentum, figuring out which team is dominating the game (outside of the score, obviously). Most of the action seems quite random and its hard to figure out why or how a team's strategy is being implemented. Any thoughts? It's not all about penalty kills, is it?

 

Hmm ... it's damn hard to do this on TV because the camera can't pick up the entire ice surface. But try this experiment when you're at a game:

I'll assume you understand the different positions. Pick out a defenseman on the ice, and watch him for an entire shift (and then for a couple more shifts.) See if he's rushing up ice a lot, into the offensive zone, and helping to keep the puck in the other team's zone so his team can create scoring chances.

If he's always back near his own goalie, or he's not possessing the puck very much, or he's always dumping the puck into the other team's zone for a line change ... then his team probably isn't generating much offense and isn't much of a threat to score.

Possession is the key in hockey, especially in the NHL, and it's rare that a team will dominate possession and still lose the game. (Unless you're the Red Wings in the conference finals. )