The best seat in the house is the view from the couch

Before I start this week, I have to pass along one more tidbit about the A-Rod trade that I forgot to mention last week. This really is a case of Fantasy meets Reality. Last year, in one of my four fantasy leagues, I was fortunate enough to get A-Rod with the first overall pick. Midway through the season I was falling short in a few other categories. Someone else in the league noticed and offered me a trade which I mulled over and ultimately accepted. The offer? A-Rod for Alfonso Soriano… and John Smoltz. Maybe the Rangers should have demanded Mariano Rivera too….

For those of you hoping for another stellar baseball column, well I really don’t have much to say until the games actually start. The steroid scandal will always be there, the only big signing of the week was Raul Mondesi (?!?) to the Pirates, and even Steinbrenner and Henry are keeping relatively quiet. So it’s finally happened. I have to talk about hockey.

I’ll admit right out of the gate, I haven’t been following the NHL this season. I know who is hurt only from my fantasy league, and I’ll be referring to the standings page of the NHL section on ESPN.com many times throughout this column. What I do know about hockey is that it needs to be fixed. Now.

Once this season ends (after the unmercifully long playoffs), the NHL will go into strike/lockout mode, probably within 24-48 hours of the Stanley Cup victory lap. And why? Because the same thing is happening in hockey that has happened in baseball many times before; the only difference is that baseball has a far greater fan base to build around. The salaries are too high. The teams aren’t drawing many fans, and are therefore losing money. The average loss per team last season was $9.1 million, or $273 million combined as a league. That’s an awful high number for a professional league not named the WNBA or WUSA. So how do we fix this?

First, fire whoever is the current marketing director for the league. What the hell is this "Made in America: Delivered on Thursdays" crap? First of all, Hockey is not "Made In America"; it is a Canadian sport. How would we feel if the Japanese pro baseball leagues started claiming that they invented baseball and that the only baseball that mattered was their league? Let’s at least pay homage to the fact the Canada did create the game. The fact that most of their teams decided to relocate to America to make more money is secondary. Secondly, the whole "Delivered on Thursdays" part. Is hockey only played on Thursdays? Did I miss the memo? Boy, I guess that explains why the season takes so long, 82 games in a season, 52 weeks in a calendar year; I’m no math whiz, but, um… More on this topic later.

That brings me to the next point. Why is the season so damned long? Hockey and Basketball are both indoor sports that should be played during the winter months, when people sit inside and watch TV (unless you live in Texas, Miami or Cali… lucky bastards). Neither of these sports should start before November or last past May. That’s still a six-month season, plus you’ve gotta figure about a month for playoffs. Football rules the American ratings, hands down. Baseball is a close second, with last year’s postseason only increasing the anticipation for this year. Basketball and Hockey are seriously losing ground to Golf. GOLF?! I love golf, but I’m not going to dedicate time to watching it unless I need a few tips for my round the next weekend.

Long, drawn-out seasons are hard for the average viewer to follow. Like I mentioned last week, Basketball and Baseball market individual players which makes it easier to follow them. With Football and Hockey, the league has to market a uniform and hope that a player keeps all of his teeth for a photo shoot.

Third, play up the violence and the offense. Know why people watch Football? Because it’s violent and easy to understand. Man throws ball, man catches ball, man runs with ball, man does stupid dance at end of field. On the other side, man catches ball, other man tries to decapitate him. Sure, the league "fines" players for a hard hit, but when you’ve got a safety earning roughly $200k per game, 15 grand for a hit that makes a statement and earns him a rep isn’t a bad tradeoff. The league knows this, they all but encourage it. When was the last time you saw someone get ejected for a hard hit? It’s part of the game.

In Hockey, a hard hit is either wildly applauded or penalized. There is no in-between. Roughing, Boarding, and Fighting penalties either need to be re-written or else removed altogether. Fans come to see their team win and to see someone get the snot knocked out of him for going over the middle. It’s the same in both Football and Hockey.

As for the offense, this is very simple. Play Olympic rules. No goal line, no two-line pass or icing penalties, larger rinks, slightly larger goals. It will really open up the game and allow the truly talented players to make a statement. The Devils are the reason I stopped watching hockey; they just made it too boring. Watching a team play solid, stifling zone defense for 60 minutes is just mind numbing. The best part of this change is that it would better prepare the American teams for the Olympics so that perhaps it won’t be such a shock the next time they win the gold. More importantly than that though, this would eliminate two of the most confusing penalties in the game. The two-line pass is relatively straightforward, kinda. But icing has always seemed like it’s essentially a judgment call to me.

Finally, the league needs a salary cap. Not that many teams have the money to spend, but the ones that do (Avalanche, Rangers, Stars, Red Wings) certainly do so without any thought of the repercussions. It’s worked well for Colorado, Dallas and Detroit. New York still needs to tweak the formula a little.

I’m in favor of a salary cap and a salary base for all four major sports. Football and basketball already have them; baseball DESPERATELY needs them, and so does hockey. Level the playing field, or court, or rink. Will a cap necessarily stop teams like Colorado from spending too much? Probably not; has it stopped the Dallas Mavericks or Washington Redskins? Does anyone honestly think the Yankees would hesitate to break the cap if it meant they could get that #4 pitcher who would be a #1 everywhere else? Of course not. But in hockey, where the revenue isn’t as guaranteed, it just might have an impact.

And that brings us back to the first point, marketing. Fans drive sports, plain and simple. If you make the game more enjoyable to the fans, the fans will fill your seats. If you treasure and recount the history of your sport, the fans will appreciate the game more. Earlier this season, the NHL staged an outdoor game between the Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens played an outdoor game that truly embraced the origin of hockey, playing outside on a frozen pond n bitter temperatures. Many of the greatest players in hockey history were there either to watch or to play in the alumni game. So how did the NHL choose to market this spectacular event to the world? It didn’t; the game was only available locally. The NHL missed a golden opportunity to showcase their sport to an entire nation of fans, yet people in the US had to see the highlights in a nice 30 second clip on Sportscenter.

Baseball has its immortal records like 755 homeruns, or 2632 consecutive games. Football has 17-0 and 17,418 rushing yards. Basketball has the 72-10 Bulls and 38,387 career points. What’s hockey got? I remember 801 goals, but Gretzky broke that almost ten years ago. That’s the only record I can think of, and that’s kind of sad.

Hockey needs to fix a lot in order to remain competitive. If not, we might just be talking about new records and new teams in a new league at this time next year. At least then we can figure out who holds the all-time records in the NHL; no one will break them ever again.

posted by Big D @ 12:00 PM