We are only two days from the start of the most grueling and exciting season in all of sports, yet hardly anyone notices.
On Oct. 2, the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins will face off, beginning the beautiful marathon known as the NHL season. If it were, say, the NFL, we'd have been inundated with advertisements for weeks featuring a pregame concert with Kenny Chesney. But you'd be hard-pressed to find much fanfare or over-hyping surrounding the NHL's opening night (but if that means no Chesney, I'm OK with it).
Perhaps this is because the NHL is still working to repair a reputation of shooting itself in the foot, from a public relations perspective. We all know the NHL -- he's that really nice kid who tries his hardest to be your friend, only to be plagued with laughable errors that ruin his chances. Like when he puts himself on Versus, a channel 16 people in the United States have in their cable packages.
Versus is a significant snag in terms of television exposure, but the NHL is making strides to rectify its previous wrongdoings.
When the league signed a deal with OLN, now Versus, it severely restricted who could view many regular-season NHL games. While NBC airs Sunday afternoon games, the chance to see out-of-market teams is significantly less frequent than in any of the other three major North American sports. To counteract this mistake, the NHL puts Alexander Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and other young stars on the air as much as possible. The network uses "flex-scheduling," ensuring the biggest names appear often on national television.
Through the Versus deal, hockey seemingly tried to destroy any national identity it had following the lockout of the 2004-05 season. But despite the missteps it has made, the NHL is rebounding with the high school and college-aged generation in the United States, thanks to the increased marketing of fan-favorites like Ovechkin and Crosby.
The league recognizes the value of players like Ovechkin and Crosby, something that's obvious any time the NHL is on a national television network. These games frequently feature at least one of the two high-profile phenoms because the NHL understands the value of players the general public that can latch onto, providing fresh blood to invigorate dormant former fans and to hook young fans-to-be into the game.
Much of what the NHL has done to promote itself, at least in the past, has been detrimental, but the league has made great strides after rising from the ashes of the 2004-05 lockout. By promoting the league's new young stars and finding a successful gimmick in the annual Winter Classic, the NHL has earned its way back to respectability in terms of drawing in new young fans.
The NHL has also found a marketing ploy that works well on the national stage in the form of its annual Winter Classic. The game, nationally broadcast by NBC every New Year's Day, pits two teams in an outdoor venue. Last year the Detroit Red Wings squared off against the Chicago Blackhawks at Wrigley Field; this year, the Philadelphia Flyers will meet the Boston Bruins at Fenway Park.
The Winter Classic seems to be cementing its place in the pantheon of NHL rituals (where else is it socially acceptable to throw an octopus onto a playing surface like Red Wings fans do during Detroit playoff games?). The league appears to be finally getting it right in terms of self-promotion, something that will benefit hockey fans and soon-to-be-hockey fans alike.
That said, do what you can to befriend that once bumbling, stumbling awkward kid, the NHL. He's maturing into something more graceful than how you might remember him, and he's growing in popularity.
