On Frozen Blog

As Game 5 in Anaheim wound down the Stanley Cup Finals and the NHL season last night, I thought ahead to the American media coverage of a largely pedestrian series, involving two less-than-glamourous franchises, and steeled myself for leads themed on “Ducks win, hardly anyone watches. Check back with us in October for more hockey coverage.”
For a good many reporters, the Neilsen’s (are they still called that?) are stop-the-presses news events: gotta get the word out (again) to the few faithful that they’re cultural pariahs. I suppose there is something illuminating about the position a sports event holds on our culture relative to, say, celebrities dancing, but my problem with its intrusion into so much of American hockey coverage, as stand-alone news, is its rote, formulaic recitation and, furthermore, the foundationless belief by its authors that hockey’s legitimacy is somehow harmed by the numbers.
To follow the line of thinking of these numbers-driven scribes, there was certainly something wrong with the maroon sweatered maniacs who nearly made my ears bleed in the press box of Giant Center last Saturday night. But I saw no problem with a single one of the 10,000-plus patrons stuffing Giant Center with their delirious enthusiasm during a magnificent AHL playoff game. I felt that there was something wrong with the outsiders nearby who failed to see Saturday’s special occasion. I felt pity for them.
You will never see a file published at OFB pegged on viewership numbers for televised hockey games, for three reasons: (1) it’s a well-worn cliche that the numbers are low (they were low when Gretzky skated on ESPN), for the sport simply doesn’t televise that well; (2) it offers no news value through our prisms of newsworthiness; and (3) we don’t premise our passion for puck on the number of couch potatoes tuning in. Indeed, it may well be the case that fewer than 500,000 Californians tuned in to the Ducks’ triumph last night. What’s news to us is that in the first decade of the 21st century California is emerging as pipeline for U.S. hockey talent.
The truly insidious part of this media malignancy is that it is trotted out as a defense for their failure to do their jobs: cover the news. This morning I can’t explain to you why NBC sought the postseason NHL as a product for its prime-time rotation. Yes it paid nothing in acquisition fees, but still, surely some washed-up actors somewhere must have been willing to play a few hands of poker for us then, and thereby earn the outlet greater revenue. Anyway, I’m glad NBC did the right thing; I suspect somewhere high up in Rockefeller Plaza there resides a high-ranking executive with a bit of shinny in his background.
I have this idea for next hockey season. One mid-season weekend I’m going to tally the total number of paying patrons identified in gamesheets for all levels of serious hockey in the United States. I want to see how many Americans move up off their couches and open their wallets and pass through turnstiles in the NHL, AHL, ECHL, numerous other minor circuits, and D-I rinks one set of Friday and Saturday nights in the dead of winter. Then I’ll see if I can find a basis for comparing those numbers with those from 10 years earlier, and maybe 20. Wouldn’t it be amazing if during this period of media blackout of our game it turned out that more Americans were patronizing hockey than ever before?