Thanks for playing, though!

Simply put… I 100% agree with your assessment. Traditionally that is. If you look at 2005 attendance figures compared to 2006 by team, you will notice that 10 teams have seen an increase in attendance, 4 staying the same, and a decrease in 16 cities. It’s very surprising to see teams like the Wild, Sens, and Avalanche losing fans. Nonetheless, its happening this year. Boston has lost an astonishing 2,301 fans from last year per game. Philadelphia is -421. These numbers speak volumes about the state of the game. These are cold weather teams too in towns with hockey rich tradition. And while I do agree that the league could drop a few teams (Florida would be a prime candidate - how many teams does FL need?), there is a bigger problem here. And that is the on-ice product.

Now let’s grab some game attendance figures, add a little theory, and see what happens. The Caps played the Thrashers and there was a huge melee, thus creating a mini-rivlary (again, no real rivalries in the league anymore). The attendance for that game was 11,284. Then they play in Atlanta the next game (16,920). Then the play in WSH tonight (15,642). So we saw INCREASES after that melee… shocker. Wierd how an extra 4,400 fans flock to a game where fireworks might happen. The Caps played the Thrashers the fourth game of the year on a Saturday night at home… attendance… 11,995. That is nearly 5,000 less than tonight.

Unfortunately we were treated to a power play fest tonight. It was pathetic to watch. Hartley handcuffs his players as if he were Roscoe Keekoetrain. Instead of guys acting like men, they slash and hack on their way to the bench. Their poor toug guy, Eric Boulton, cross checked Donald Brashear on two seperate incidents… again, on his way to the bench. It’s sad to watch this. Boulton will be out of a job soon… why carry a tough guy when you don’t allow him to fight? If all teams were like this, the league would be dying even faster than it is now. The game featured five goals, four of which were scored on the power play or one four-on-four hockey. There were EIGHT obstruction-like penalties called. How much fun is that to watch?

THAT is your “new NHL.” It needs quite a bit of work. And before we start moving teams back to Winnipeg and Hartford, let’s focus on some things we really can change… like keeping the scoring up without killing the emotion of the game, like building rivalries instead of tearing them down.

Cool it with the “Bettman, and guys like you” crap. Have I not stated clearly enough that I think Bettman stinks? Sheesh.

Now listen, to answer your question, maybe you need a little history lesson on the popularity of hockey in the US. (Never mind Canada, since hockey’s popularity has never really waned there.) Hockey has always been popular in the Northeast and the upper Midwest, that is, the places where ponds freeze in the winter. In 1980, the US olympic team pulled off the impossible by beating the ultimate “Euro” hockey team, the USSR. Many of the kids on that Miracle team went on to play in the NHL, and the NHL gained nation-wide popularity that it had never seen before, with TV market penetration even in the deep south. Before this, in the 70s and before, hockey was a exactly a “niche sport” with popularity mainly in the aforementioned regions. Before the Miracle, you’d have been nuts to suggest hockey would ever be popular outside the Northeast and Midwest, much less that there would be two (!) teams in Florida.

Then came the expansion of the 90s, which not only watered down the talent pool, but also put the league in markets with tenuous long-term viability (to say the least). Behold, by the late 90s and early 00s, teams began to complain of losing money. The league lost its network TV contract. Fickle southern markets began to fizzle. But — guess what — hockey remains wildly popular where it’s always been popular, in the Northeast and Midwest. What we see today is the expansion bubble bursting.

I say contract the fucking league to 24 teams. Get the hell out of Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, North Carolina (sorryAlex!), Texas and Tennesee. Move one or two of the California teams to Canada. What’s the point trying to sell the game where the game can’t be played by kids at the park?

Seriously, guys, do you want what it takes to give the game appeal in the south? These markets want NASCAR. Should we make the NHL more like NASCAR? Should the jerseys sport ads for Target and Tide?

The Problem you’ve identified is a product of over-expansion. Plain and simple. This zero tolerance argument is just a distraction from the real problem. The answer is just as simple: contraction. I don’t give a flying fuck at the moon about TV ratings in Alabama. You want true grit and emotion, focus on the markets where kids grow up skating before they can walk.

So while Bettman, and guys like you, think zero tolerance is the end all to solving clutching and grabbing, you ingore the side effects. By getting rid of one problem, Bettman opened up a huge can of worms… it called finesse, emotionless, passionless hockey. Some might call it European hockey. It hasn’t sold and it won’t sell.

Let me ask you a question, why do you think today’s NHL isn’t selling? Why do you think hockey has become a “niche sport”? Marketing? New t.v. deal? The on ice product? The uniforms??? LOL! The placement of teams? Enlighten me.

Look, you’re going around in circles. First I hear the main beef is the zero tolerance rules enforcement. Then you grudgingly agree this has successfully ended clutch and grab (even if it’s gone a bit too far). Then you go and talk about “tradition” and “emotion” which come off sounding like a euphemisms for the good old days of fighting.

If I hear you right, you want no clutch and grab and more fighting. So again I ask what’s that got to do with zero tolerance? At least zero tolerance has addressed a serious problem that resulted from excessive expansion. Does hockefansunite.com acknowledge this? The message is convoluted by an evident blind hatred of Bettman.

We can all agree Bettman sucks, has been horrible for the game, and shouldn’t even have a job driving the Zamboni for the Ice Capades. But we also seem to agree that zero tolerance has at least done something to address one of the ways he damaged the game. By focusing on zero tolerance as the culprit in killing hockey, hockefansunite.com misses the point, in my opinion.

But now we get to the meat of the matter: you guys want more fighting. So why don’t you make that your rallying cry, instead of railing against the enforcement standards that have eliminated clutch and grab? Talk about the instigator, talk about the crusade against fighting. Your message gets convoluted when you talk about zero-tolerance. It’s unrelated (except that the same comish is repsonsible for it).

By the way, I’m a junior hockey fan. You want fighting? Come see our WHL “Portland Winter Hawks”:http://www.winterhawks.com/ play the Seattle Thunderbirds. Or, better still, check out any given Junior B match-up at a crappy rink near you. The Jr. B team (whom I won’t embarass by directly linking) that plays at the “rink where I skate”:http://www.valleyicearena.com/ has just one (you read that correctly: one) win this season. Those boys get pretty chippy when they’re down six goals in the third period. Heh heh heh.