Doomsberry talks about the schedule
Doomsberry left a comment today to this post in regards to the disparities of the NHL schedule. I asked him if he’d mind if his comment became a post and so here you go, in his own words…
This is actually a very good topic and one that fans will continue to debate. The Wings have always been at a disadvantage from a travel standpoint. The rest of the Western Conference teams have benefited from the Wings popularity through a boost in attendance when the Wings are in town and many of the teams need that boost.
Another part of your post is, in my humble (and usually doomed) opinion, very revealing of the NHL under the leadership of Bettman. Obviously the league has an interest in increasing TV viewership and thereby increasing revenues, in particular for those franchises that are in non-traditional hockey markets. The most important way the league can do this is by increasing fan awareness of individual players. I believe, in a very subtle way, the league has moved away from promoting traditional rivalries (the Original 6 teams in particular) and are now promoting individual players. Advertisers look for those players that the fans identify with, and that have very high Q scores. Individuals, not teams, are what the advertisers look for. This has been successful in the NBA and we all know where Bettman came from. It is Shaq vs Kobe, not Miami vs LA. Free agency in all sports has reduced team loyalty and increased the level in which fans identify with individual players. I believe it is revealing that your post mentions neither the Penquins nor the Capitals, but rather Crosby’s team and Ovechkin’s team (and that is not a criticism, just an observation). If the league promotes those two players as individuals, and those players move to another team, the league has lost nothing in terms of it’s identity with the fans, and I believe that is the direction the NHL is going.
What does all this have to do with the scheduling? The scheduling, in the new NHL, will have everything to do with divorcing the NHL from it’s past, increasing advertising revenues, and promoting individual stars around the league. Unfortunately, it will have little to do with traditional rivalries, the Original 6 teams, or the inconvenience created by having a team in the Eastern time zone suffer through numerous road trips through multiple time zones. It will have even less to do with hardcore hockey fans and everything to do with the incessant desire to bring in new “fans†(at the expense of those hardcore, loyal fans). A home and home series on back to back nights between the Wings and the Leafs does nothing for the league because those teams sell out anyway and have good TV ratings no matter who they are playing (not to mention there might be bloodshed the second night and the league does not want any of that!). The league would prefer we play Nashville and Columbus extra times to help fill their arena and promote the sport in their area. Compare our old rivalry with Toronto, which stood the test of time over decades, with the rivalry we had with Colorado that lasted a mere 8 years or so. The Wings/Avs rivalry started to fizzle as soon as certain individual players left and has now been reduced to basically another Western Conference game.
In my opinion, the league will eventually regret destroying the traditional rivalries and ignoring the history and lore of the sport of the hockey while pursuing efforts to prop up franchises that are the creation of overexpansion, greed and ego. The fact that they feel the need to “sell†the game in those markets tells you all you need to know.
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3 Responses to “Doomsberry talks about the schedule”
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November 14th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
He can’t possibly be serious, can he? If the league’s primary concern was marketing individual players, then this is the LAST scheduling format that they’d chose. How does Pittburgh playing in the 15 Western Conference markets once every three years improve the marketability of Crosby? It doens’t…. at all.
It’s pretty obvious that the reason why they chose this scheduling format was to use rivalries to build up league’s popularity… which is exactly the opposite of what this guy is saying.
November 14th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
I understand your point, however, my point was they are not promoting team rivalries, they are promoting individuals. Keeping Crosby’s appearances in the West scarce is not contrary to promoting him, in fact it may make him more of a lure. If the Rolling Stones were playing the Palace 2 or 3 times a year the impact would not be the same as an appearance once every decade. As for creating rivalries, there already were rivalries in the league. The league has decided instead to try to force a rivalry with the Preds upon Wings fans. The league would rather have the Wings help prop up Columbus instead of playing Toronto or Montreal. The bottomline is you can’t force rivalries and you don’t strengthen the league by eliminating the existing ones.
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Of course they’d rather force existing rivalries that build on existing ones. It’s smart business. The Columbuses and Nashvilles of the league need the Red Wings much more than Toronto does. Of course Leafs fans and Wings fans would rather see it, but helping out teams that sell out every game doesn’t do anything for the league.