Is The NHL At The Bottom Of A Down Cycle?

I know it's very popular these days to bash the NHL and the way the league is being run -- and color me as one who regularly spends time among the guilty. Yes, the league indeed has its problems, but what if some of those problems are just part of the regular ebb and flow of American business?

In other words, what if the NHL is in a down cycle because all of the teams in the major American markets have been down for so long that the game can't quite remember what it's like to be up?

Think back to 1994 and that Sports Illustrated cover that announced that the NHL was displaying more sizzle than the NBA in the wake of the seven game final between the Rangers and the Canucks that ended with New York winning its first Stanley Cup since 1940.

It's important to remember that at that time, most of the NHL teams in America's largest cities were considered to be legitimate Stanley Cup contenders on a yearly basis.

Before the Rangers won in 1994, they took the President's Trophy in 1992, the first season that Mark Messier spent on Broadway. In 1993, after five seasons of evangelizing hockey in Southern California, Gretzky and the Kings faced the Canadiens. In 1992, it was Mario Lemieux and Pittsburgh vs. Chicago, a team that featured a young Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour, Chris Chelios and a hidden gem in Dominik Hasek. In 1990, the Oilers dynasty had their last gasp in the Finals against a Boston team led by Ray Bourque and Cam Neely.

New York. Boston. Chicago. Los Angeles. The four biggest American cities, and for roughly the same stretch they all had great hockey teams that regularly appeared in the playoffs and threatened to win the Cup.

I haven't even begun to mention St. Louis, where Brett Hull and Adam Oates authored a three-year reign of goal-scoring terror, and Detroit, where the foundation of a team that would eventually win three Cups in six seasons was being unfairly labeled as a perennial playoff choker.

But what do we see now? In Boston, we're only one year removed from an NHL MVP being traded in the middle of a campaign. In New York, the Rangers have missed the playoffs in seven of the last eight seasons, and are struggling mightily to qualify for this year's tournament.

In Chicago, the Blackhawks have been down so long it's hard to remember what those crowds were like in the old Chicago Stadium. St. Louis, after years of incredible support from one of the best sports fan bases in the nation, is now a graveyard. As for the Kings, they may as well no longer exist.

Of all the teams I mentioned, the only big market still thriving in the standings is Detroit, and even they've started to see some erosion, as games that are announced as sellouts seem to come part and parcel with plenty of empty seats.

Like it or not, big cities are engines of commerce and culture. And now that the NHL has experienced a sustained nose dive in those big markets, how can we really express surprise that the game has suffered in the television ratings and the eyes of advertisers and potential broadcasting partners?

Remember, this conversation is one that ought to be divorced from considerations about the quality of play on the ice. They're really two very different issues. But as I've hinted at before, do we really believe that the New York Times would have stopped sending a reporter to cover the Rangers on the road last season had New York won the right to draft Sidney Crosby after the lockout?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting the league ought to be doing something to help these big market American teams out of their doldrums. But when and if they do recover, it shouldn't be surprising if the league's fortunes overall -- and I'm talking in terms of both perception and reality -- recover with them.

POSTSCRIPT: For another interesting take on that SI cover story, click here for a discussion deep inside of HF Boards.

Eric 12:25 AM

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