Actually, looking around the web, I found this article which referrred to the above SI article.
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Another bad break for NHL in finals[/u][/color]
May 24th, 2004
source:
MSNBC.COMIt was just 10 years ago, when the Rangers were winning their first Cup since 1940 (you might have heard?), that Sports Illustrated bellowed to the world that the NHL's hot, the NBA's not. Within weeks, fully embracing the dreaded SI curse, NHL owners locked out their players in a labor dispute, only to resolve that dust-up with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that has owners here again, a decade later, about to lockout the rank-and-file when the CBA expires Sept. 15. The only question to be asked now: how bad will the players shred 'em this time at the bargaining table?
The decade since SI's, shall we say, blessing, hasn't been overly kind to the NHL. No, sir. What then looked like a promising profile, full of infinite upside, has turned into a stalled, too often constipated product that has too many players on too many teams playing too many games without too many people watching.
Somehow, get this, Nashville has failed to capture the full magic and mystique of the ice game. Sonofagun!
Under the charge of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who became the game's lord and overseer Feb. 1, 1993, the mission soon became to spread the game's TV envelope in hopes that more big-league cities in the puck business would translate into more people across the land watching the game and, no doubt, bolting across their front lawns to play pickup street hockey. Go left, at the Chevy!
Well, that didn't happen, and now the Lords of the Boards are talking about reducing the regular season from 82 games to 72. They're coming to grips that more is less, in terms of scheduling, which is probably the first step in realizing that fewer franchises would be a whole lot better, too. But more of that at a quieter time, like, you know, sometime over the next two or three years that the NHL remains in lockout.
With a 30-team league came, of course, 30-team parity, which has led to the likes of the Bolts and Flames meeting in this year's tete-a-tete.
Last year we had the Disney Ducks as first-time party-goers. Quack.
The year before that, we had the Hurricanes, who have since been doing business as the Carolina Tropical Depressions.
You get 30 teams passing the biscuit around, in a game dominated by coaches who defense (read: trap) the living daylights out of it, and hey, you're bound to end up with perennial matchups between Team Pretty Good vs. Team Nobody. This year, from strictly a hype and profile standpoint, we've got a pair of the Nobodies.
Given the inherent nature of the game, in which a goalie can account for 75 percent or more of a team's success, and then mix in a Trap-'em-'til-they-die mentality, and you've got trouble. It's not like baseball, in which a rich and ostentatious George Steinbrenner can spend and pretty much be assured of best players producing best results. It's not like the NBA, where the single best player in the game can lead his respective club into, or at least toward, dynasties. Witness: Michael Jordan in Chicago and The Shaq in Los Angeles.
Truth is, the NHL, in terms of parity and unknown outcomes, is most like the wildly-popular NFL. But football has far fewer games, and that lack of frequency has played perfectly into the viewing and allegiance habits of ADA (Attention Deficit America). Perhaps hockey would be wise to trim to a 16-game regular season? Again, a subject for less busy times, you now, in the near and extended future. Either that, or perhaps a viewing public on Ritalin would be the NHL's remedy.
The best story line the game has had to follow in recent Cup runs was Ray Bourque's successful quest with Colorado in '01. Even the puck-challenged shed a sentimental tear when the aged Bourque, an icon for some 20 years in Boston, received the Cup from Avs captain Joe Sakic and hoisted it with such reverence and finality above his head.
It was a moment to behold. It also turned out to be the last game Bourque ever played, which added to the theatre around the time, but offered little segue or fan connection for the following year. That's not to blame Bourque. But it is kind of typical of the league's luck. Its good stories often end abruptly.
What has hurt the NHL more than anything, in terms of its Cup finals capturing America's heart, has been the stilted, suffocating style of play that has crept into the game since the months after that Ranger victory in '94, back when the NHL was HOT.
The following season, once the Lockout came to an end, the Devils beat Detroit for the Cup, and Jacques Lemaire's faceless Exit 16W's did it first and foremost by employing its blandless, unexciting trap attack. A trend was born. The following spring, Florida trapped up the course, too, and made it to the finals as an easy sparring partner for the far more powerful Avs.
More often than not, a trapping, defense-first-last-and-always team has made it to the Cup finals over the last 10 years. That's led to cities without much, if any, hockey heritage. In turn, that has typically led to highly unwatchable and forgettable hockey at what should be the best time of year for the game and its fans.
This time around, just as the game is about to go on Lockout again, we have two teams that eschew the trap for trading chances. Both the Bolts and Flames get at it. They both love to skate and the Flames especially love to hit. It's a hybrid of drag race and demolition derby. Stand back, and enjoy. Despite their no-name towns of origin, they should provide us with some thrilling entertainment these next 4-7 games.
Granted, these two teams lack that big-city profile that would bring them a guaranteed edge on the TV screen. But by and large, the NHL's big cities aren't playing with this amount of passion, beautiful simplicity and grassroots bump and bang and the occasional leather-palmed facewash along the boards.
Note Rangers, and note Kings: for all your big-city ways, you'd do well to be a lot more like the hockey hicks in Tampa and Calgary.
Kevin Dupont is a frequent contributor for NBCSports.com and covers the NHL for the Boston Globe.
