Why Hockey is Better than Your Favorite Sport

Recently, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made a statement regarding hockey and ESPN. He stated that the NHL was in no particular rush to rejoin the ESPN airwaves due to the fact that the NHL has up until this point, been growing without utilizing the vast resources and reach of the WWL.

But perhaps Bettman is savvier than we would like to believe. Perhaps even for the out of touch prick that he appears to be, he understands hockey a little better than we would like to believe, and wants to preserve hockey's pristine nature. And by pristine, I mean it primarily in the "uncorrupted" sense of the term.

Big time media places all sports as well as those sports' primary actors under a high-powered microscope. The smallest actions, performed on or off the court, field, pitch, etc, are hailed or critiqued and seemingly to no end. Aubrey Huff's Joba-like fist pump, Rondo's bitch slap, Kurt Warner's footprints in the sand. Some of these things clearly deserve plenty of attention, but like any story, the larger it becomes the more out of focus things begin to appear.

Hockey avoids this pitfall, well, because the biggest story in hockey is apparently the color of Barry Melrose's blazer (or face). Think about some of the major events that have already occurred during the Stanley Cup playoffs; Crosby and Ovechkin both getting hat tricks in the same game, the young guns of Chicago making a surge toward the cup, Scott Walker breaking Aaron Ward's face and essentially without repercussion. Sure, some of this sounds familiar, but how different would it be if we were talking about Kobe and Lebron scoring 50 in the same game, the Arizona Cardinals making it to the Super Bowl, or Kyle Lowry punching Sasha Vujacic square in the grill (Oh, heaven)? These were, and would be jammed down our throats to no end. The hockey stories? Well, they might just even get a headline on the ESPN.com frontpage.



But don't think for a second that I am complaining about this. This state of affairs is preferential. If people took more notice of the Walker-Ward incident, well, then we would have even more clowns chiming in on the should fighting be banned in hockey? debate. And that is not what hockey needs. More fans? Sure. More Skip Bayless? Absolutely not.

Hockey is a cult sport, and like all things cult, unless you submerse yourself in the culture and begin to appreciate the little intricacies that make the game so unique and interesting, then it is difficult to invest your fandom. However, ESPN would do no one any favors in this regard. The ratings may get a slight increase and maybe a few extra people might go to a Coyotes game (although probably not), but the things that make the game great will slowly be glossed over, while the things that make the game fashionable (for those with vested interests) will be enhanced. Drama will be injected into an environment where dropping the gloves is about business, not the storyline.



Hockey is better than your favorite sport because the drama occurs strictly on the ice where it belongs, and isn't manufactured in a studio somewhere in central Connecticut.