Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 play

L.A. Times had Hockey Hall of Fame writer Helene Elliott with a piece on A1 and it was a story of the Ducks' rise, them getting the Cup before the Kings and what it could mean for hockey in SoCal. Scott Niedermayer was above the fold in a photo with the Cup.

The sports section devoted 75 percent of its front page to the Ducks with a big teaser below the fold on NBA finals and Dodgers and Angels. A lot of stories on the inside, too.

Times' headline on the sports page? --- Webbed Feat

 

Beat, I'll make that a double as a hockey guy. I played the game through juniors, played games in both Canada and the U.S. (I've felt the love of a nice hip check from my Canadian pals who wanted nothing better than to knock a guy from the States down in places like Owen Sound, Ontario). And I've only followed the Rangers since Brad Park was patrolling their blue line.

The NHL just needs to start from ground zero. Fire Bettman, hire a real marketing staff instead of the two high school kids marketing the game from a lemonade stand from somewhere off the 401, and put their games on somewhere besides a fishing channel that few people seem to receive.

More importantly, they DESPERATELY need their hockey markets back to doing well, namely the old-school towns like Boston, Montreal, Chicago, Philadelphia and Toronto, all of whose fans wrote off the season by April Fools Day. I did some counting yesterday and realized that those five cities have gone a combined 167 years without the Stanley Cup. That's bad.

 

Was the Times the paper that pulled its road game coverage this year?

 

Road coverage out of the West. And for the Kings, too.

 

Times couldn't ignore playoff hockey coverage for the Ducks. Of course, that does seem like a foreign thing considering that the Tribune Co. hasn't had to worry much about the Blackhawks and playoff coverage for a few years now.

 

Henry:

If you live in an area four hours away from the nearest NHL team, we aren't talking about a major metropolitian center or probably anything more than a mid-sized newspaper.

I know what TV ratings say, but hockey is a major team sport. I'm guessing your paper runs standings every day, so it is important enough for that.

NASCAR generates TV ratings and there seems to be a whole lifestyle thing, but what about attendance for the second biggest stock car site on a weekend? How many people go to that? This is my problem with the NASCAR is more important than the NFL argument. On a February midweek evening where there are seven or eight NHL games, pretty much every one of those arenas will have at least 15,000 people, and most of those teams will average 15,000 people for every game they play. The tickets are priced pretty steep, too. My guess is they are priced around the same level as NASCAR tickets.

How does your paper play the Indy 500? My guess is you don't run IRL on the first page every week, but the Indy 500 is run on the first page because it is that important an overall event in the sports world. People also don't care about track, speed skating or gymnastics, but they care when the Olympics come around. A Big Event.

The same thing with the Stanley Cup. It is a Big Event. Granted I am a hockey follower, but if I didn't see the clinching game of the Stanley Cup Final on the front page I would think, "this is a rinky-dink paper" even if your circulation was over 70,000. I think your decision is parochial.

 

Of course it is. But you say that as if it's a bad thing.

I'm not saying it should be on the front page of your section. Only you know what works for you.

But we're not trying to sell you a newspaper, after all, or get huzzahs at APSE. We're trying to sell papers in our market. And we do.

Yes, there are some events that transcend geography and good sense to get play in any paper. Yes, the Indy 500 is a good example.

But I challenge the notion that, outside of a few American cities, the Stanley Cup is a Big Event any more, if it ever was.

A Game 7, maybe, just because people respond to that.

And if it had been a Predators-Senators series, say, then that would have generated a little extra buzz around here.

Please note that we have probably been more disciplined here in the last year ahout NHL coverage than in any year since I got here in 2001. We ran a weekly update on the league all season in an anchored spot.

I'm doing the same for the WNBA. Anybody want to argue that as a major team sport? Good luck.

The next phone call I get about the NHL will be the first in six years of working here.

By the way, it seems to me that Gold wants to argue the Stanley Cup onto the front page because it's something that predictably should be there (which I really don't buy). EE94 wants to argue putting it out there as a change-of-pace item that will surprise and delight readers (which I honestly find more compelling).

Can it be both?

 

James Mirtle (desk guy for the Globe and (hockey blogger extraordinaire) has compiled some of today's front pages

http://mirtle.blogspot.com/2007/06/stanley-cup-front-pages.html

 

If it was such a big event, then why did the New York Times not staff it until Game 5, and that was only because Lee Jenkins was already in SoCal doing a piece on the Chatsworth High School baseball team.

There were seven major metro newspapers outside of SoCal that staffed the thing from beginning to end: Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Denver Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, New York Daily News, Rocky Mountain News and the Buffalo News

Neither paper in "Hockeytown" was there.

It's a niche sport.

 

The L.A. Daily News has Bob Barker as the A1 centerpiece with a Stanley Cup tease at the top of the rail. Sad.

 

EE, this general kind of thinking really bothers me, too.

Just because you're doing something different doesn't mean you're doing something right.

And just because we're following trends doesn't mean we're doing something wrong.

 

NOODLES!!!!!