Quote:
Originally Posted by thomaszwei
This post made my whole morning.
100% agree with the comments about Gonchar and the Pens. He took a cheap shot at the guy and got away with it. This is the way the NHL looks at stuff if the player "doesn't have a history" of doing that sort of stuff, though. Richards took a run at some guy on the Panthers earlier this season and got away with it also...but then, Briere got suspended for a "charge" against that guy on the Avs?
You can blame some of the attendance woes on the fact that the country is in a recession and the average person isn't going to shell out money for professional sporting events. Attendance is down in all sports, so it's not just the NHL that's suffering.
That being said, I think the biggest problem in the NHL isn't the fact that the people running the show are a bunch of idiots, though that's partly to blame. There's plenty of incompetence in other sports as far as refereeing and management goes. It's often said that you can call holding on every play in the NFL for example - and the refs there routinely blow touchdown and pass interference calls. But the NFL rakes in tons of cash and utterly destorys in TV ratings.
The problem with the NHL is that for some god-for-saken reason, they just don't know how to market the sport. Hockey is faster then it's ever been, scoring is up more than ever before and there's a whole new generation of young players out there, so I can't understand how they haven't been able to raise interest.
A few years ago, this problem really came to my attention when I saw a stark contrast to the way games were being advertised when compared to other leagues. The NBA had sharp, edgy stuff that caught your eye, with the Black Eyed Peas "Let's Get It Started" synced up to dancers and NBA highlights on ESPN. The NHL, by contrast, had commercials with Shania Twain explaining the rules of hockey.
Of course, this whole Versus/Directv debacle isn't helping things either.
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I'm kind of nitpicking here but Briere did deserve some sort of action for that hit (the one against the Avs right?), it was a kind of jumping crosscheck to the guys upper chest, neck, or face after a goal had been scored.