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Don't Call It A Comeback - The Return of the NHL

© Roy Pickering

How forgiving are sports fans? To what limit can their loyalty be stretched before it finally snaps? The National Hockey League will soon find out how dedicated its fan base is. By going on strike for nearly an entire year, causing a full season of play to be lost, the owners and players of the NHL alienated everyone who enjoys watching grown men guide a puck across ice. Now that all has been settled and play is set to resume next season, one wonders if the ice men will find themselves welcomed back with open arms, or will they be performing before half packed arenas.

Hockey is not the great American pastime. That honor goes to baseball. Hockey therefore gets a much shorter leash to hang itself on. Major League Baseball has proven itself able to survive prolonged strikes, steroid scandals, the hypocrisy of keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame, and other issues that sporadically pop up to alienate its fan base. The love of watching twenty game winners hurl balls 90 miles per hour, and that of cheering for strongmen who routinely hit those balls four hundred feet and beyond, proves itself stronger than any grudge most baseball fans can hold. Some of them gripe about how unfair it is that teams like the Yankees have ten times more money to spend on talent than anyone else, but in the end, they keep coming out to the ballpark. The competitive parity of teams in the NFL secures equally strong support from football fans. And the NBA has not only won the hearts of American fans, but has reached beyond our shores and shown itself to have global appeal, even with Michael Jordan in retirement.

As for the NHL, it has always seemed (to me anyway) to be a league that belonged primarily in Canada with just a few big market American teams added to the mix, rather than the other way around. Wayne Gretzky appeared to be carrying the entire league on his back in his day, with a little help from Mark Messier. Prior to the strike there was sufficient support from American hockey fans for the league to get by, but not for it to flourish like baseball, football, basketball, tennis, etc. Now that casual hockey watchers have been alienated and may choose not to return, that leaves strictly the true fanatics to keep the NHL afloat. Are there enough of them to do so? This question will be answered soon enough.