The NHL has been, far and away, the most disappointing of the major North American sports leagues during my lifetime.
Really, you have some serious issues that the NHL has not only allowed to plague them, but to grow all out of proportion. There is fighting, which of course appeals to the baser fans who scream for blood, but which has grown out of control, and which has become kind of like an unwanted side freak show, allowing comparisons to WWE-style entertainment to be made.
But the worst came in the 1990's and the 2000's. During that time, there were some serious strikes that either shortened some seasons, or outright eliminated them. When the NHL had to suspend the entire 2004-05 season, I had grown tired of the NHL. The strike shortened season in 1995 had been bad enough, although hockey had at least returned, and the playoffs had been exciting. But cancelling an entire season was far, far worse.
Then there was the whole thing with the league turning it's back on traditional markets up north. It began when the Minnesota Northstars became the Dallas Stars, but it did not end there. The Hartford Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes, the Winnipeg Jets relocated to the desert to become the Phoenix Coyotes. And the poor fans of Quebec, who had endured years of losing to finally have the seeds of a championship team, saw their team relocate to Colorado just in time to hoist the cup in 1996. Add some other southern expansion teams to the mix, including the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Florida Panthers, the Nashville Predators, the San Jose Sharks, and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, as well as the now defunct Atlanta Thrashers, and you had a league that had far too many teams, and that meant watered down talent levels for numerous franchises.
In particular, Canadian teams were hurt, and Canadian fans, watching some of their teams leave for greener pastures south of the border, and seeing others, including Ottawa, Calgary, and Edmonton, under constant threat of relocation, began to follow smaller hockey leagues instead. Who could blame them? After all, the league seemed hell bent on pushing Canadians away. The Flames were robbed of a Stanley Cup clinching goal in Game 6 of the 2004 Cup Finals, and Canadian teams have been hit particularly hard by the watered down talent. This year, for the first time in NHL history, not a single Canadian team qualified for the postseason, which marked a pathetic distinction which the league should feel ashamed of.
Yes, they should feel ashamed of it, but there is no indication that they actually do feel badly about it, as the move to create still one more southern expansion team in what is clearly not a traditional hockey market would suggest. The league is widely expected to go ahead and reward Las Vegas with an expansion franchise that would play in 2017, and become that city's first major pro sports franchise.
What is problematic, though, is that the league's record on this score is rather poor. Las Vegas is in the southwestern desert, and not that far away, there is another franchise struggling in a very similar market. The Phoenix Coyotes have been failing for years now, always on the verge of bankruptcy. Attendance is very low, and efforts to generate money have generally failed. Still, the league seems to insist that their experiment in Phoenix, as well as other weak hockey markets where attendance and revenue is generally low, has been a success. They will point to the postseason success that certain southern franchises have enjoyed, particularly the Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the Cup in 2004, the Carolina Hurricanes, who won the Cup in 2006, and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, who won the Cup in 2007. And while these teams have indeed enjoyed success on the ice, and attendance temporarily spikes up during these playoffs runs, this success has been far from indicating some long term success. Even now, it is hard to associate Anaheim with the Ducks, or Tampa Bay with the Lightning, or Carolina with the Hurricanes, even when you think of sports. Football, baseball and basketball are generally far more popular.
Think of some of the great hockey dynasties and rivalries of the past, and they are all northern, cold weather teams. The great Montreal Canadiens teams, and their rivalry with the Boston Bruins, for example. Or the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks. There was a time when the Toronto Maple Leafs actually mattered, and were relevant, as the 11 Cup banners hanging in the rafters suggests. More recently, there were teams like the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980's.
While certain northern markets still enjoy considerable success, it does not feel the same. Somehow, the Detroit Red Wings defeating the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2002 Cup Finals felt bizarre, as did the Chicago Blackhawks win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Pittsburgh Penguins had to get past two southern expansion teams, first beating Tampa Bay to get to the Cup Finals, then beating San Jose to win it.
All of this feels off, and this was compounded by the fact that not a single Canadian team qualified for the playoffs. There is a problem, because the league keeps falling further out of relevance, and keeps driving disgruntled fans away.
Yet, this move to make an expansion franchise in Las Vegas shows that, far from having learned their lesson, the league is putting the pedal to the medal in driving fans away. Frankly, I'm getting closer to losing all interest in the NHL myself. There used to be a time when it was fun. But the decisive lack of success of many traditional northern - particularly Canadian - teams, coupled with emphasis on watering down the talent level of franchises and favoring expansion to warm weather cities that never see ice (or maybe Las Vegas is known to have ice in the desert, and I just don't know about it?) signals a continuing failure on the part of the NHL. In time, the numbers are likely going to bear this out. In fact, I believe they already are.
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