Raleigh, N.C. – For weeks, we’ve been hearing it: If two small-market franchises face off in the Stanley Cup Finals, nobody’s going to watch. Nobody’s going to care.
Well, now that the Edmonton vs. Carolina matchup is set, and opens Monday night in Raleigh, are those widespread assumptions right?
I’m asking.
Of course, “nobody” is a relative term. And if we went just by TV ratings, we could infer that America is a nation of idiots, obsessed with “American Idol” and “Survivor 23: Hanging with Paris Hilton.”
Beyond that, though, I have several problems with the doomsday or derisive attitude about a small-market Finals. It often seems to be based on the assumption that there is a population coefficient tied to the merits of a series. Some of the same things are said about Major League Baseball and the NBA playoffs, but that’s mostly tied to the idea that big-market fan bases can be the foundation of better ratings. At least in hockey, though, it also comes with this ridiculous idea that the greater the combined population of the two markets, the more a series is worthy of attention throughout the United States.
Some of that comes from media folks who argue that hockey is a niche sport to start with, and it has fans who lose interest to a greater degree than in any other sport when their favorite teams are eliminated.
Like most overstatements, there is some truth to it. Some.
Applied to Denver, for example, that kind of thinking goes like this: Even when the Avalanche was selling out and the Nuggets were packing in 3,000 fans on many game nights, there was far more interest in the NBA in this market than the NHL. The interest was not in hockey in general, but in the Avalanche specifically.
But why should this series not be worthy of attention solely because the areas’ populations don’t crack the Top 20 in North America? The buzz-saw Oilers, with Chris Pronger holding down the backline and Dwayne Roloson playing well after coming off the Wild’s scrap heap, face a Hurricanes outfit that has been entertaining all season and has several intriguing story lines.
In a sense, this is a challenge to you readers who profess to be hockey fans. I’m not going to lecture you that you must watch or listen to the Finals, that you must read the coverage, that you must regale everyone in your workplace with morning-after discussions about how the Hurricanes’ Eric Staal is one of the most underappreciated players in professional sports. (The “There are no young stars in this series” statement doesn’t fly, either. Staal is no Sidney Crosby at this point; he’s better.)
What I am saying is that if you wave off this series like a disallowed goal, you’ll be providing ammunition – ammunition for the thesis the NHL has a niche fan base to start with, and it suffers far more proportional attrition as the playoffs continue than any other sport.
One impediment for hockey is the sport’s tendency to eat its own, so to speak. There is a jealousy about “nontraditional” markets being in the spotlight, which means we’ll again be hearing and reading – especially from writers and fans from Canada or the larger markets on the Atlantic seaboard – all the absurd criticisms about the Triangle area of North Carolina not understanding hockey or deserving a quality NHL franchise. Edmonton folks or others in the “Canadiac” cabal will assume that we don’t remember all those thousands of empty seats for Oilers games in the ’90s, or that we will understand they were empty because Edmonton fans are too smart to patronize a bad product.
(When that happens anywhere else but Canada or an Original Six city, that’s because they’re bad markets.)
Carolina should be feted as an NHL success story, showing that a nontraditional market can embrace the sport, given a decent team and an eclectic, highly educated population base that, much like Colorado’s, includes many residents who were fans of other franchises first. (Or still are.) If it’s a bandwagon because the Hurricanes are winning, so what? There aren’t bandwagons in the NBA or baseball? Why is that such a “negative” when evaluating hockey’s popularity, but it’s just a given – and nothing to be ashamed of – in other sports?
Instead, the NHL too often is put on the defensive about it.
And then you come back to this: Judged solely on its on-ice merits, this shapes up as an intriguing series at the culmination of the New NHL’s first season.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
