I didn’t really think about this much until I followed the Winnipeg Jets. While that was the impetus, I think the fans are really what’s at the heart of the NHL’s successes.
Yes, the Winnipeg Jets are a microcosm of the NHL. The underdog quality is inherently lovable. That’s why we watch Rudy and rooted for George Mason in ’06, even though none of us know where it is.
Among the NHL teams, Winnipeg is a natural underdog. Winnipeg is, by far, the smallest city to host an NHL team, and almost half of the city ahead of it, Buffalo. But they’ve managed to compete.
A friend once told me they’re the only truly unhateable team in the four major sports. The NHL is the underdog sport. Of the four majors, they’re fourth in revenue, by over a billion dollars. They’re almost ten billion behind the NFL.
But that makes the NHL lovable. My friends are not sports people. I’ve tried to get them into my unfaltering love for baseball, to no avail. It’s “boring”. But the NHL? It’s an easy sell.
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It’s fun, it’s fast-paced. You know when the breaks are coming and how long they’ll be. And, by extension, pretty much how long the game will be. It’s simple. Baseball? Not so much.
Football? Once a week makes it tolerable, but too many commercials. Basketball? The last five minutes of a close game encompasses entire eras. Neverending. True tragedy.
But they love watching hockey with me. I’ve created proxy Jets fans. Could I have done this with, say, the Penguins? No. I couldn’t’ve. My girlfriend hates Sidney Crosby, though she’s not even sure why.
But, despite Gary Bettman’s best efforts to be a pariah, the NHL is pretty much without controversy. Yes, they did really muddle the whole John Scott All-Star thing, but that just made the players more likable. Nobody really likes corporations in today’s world.
But Can Sports Even Be About Sports Again?
And I know Slava Voynov was outed, and Semyon Varlamov gets to continue his career like nothing ever happened, but the NHL has, for the most part, avoided the pitfalls of other leagues.
The players of the NHL are warring with the owners. The public, despite which route they’ve chosen, are angry about it. Basketball has a massive parity problem. I, personally, won’t watch it. I love sports for the competition and the unknown. I don’t care to see the same people in the Finals each season.
The NFL has a bit of a problem with that, too, but whatever. They’re more worried about the crime, the concussions and the protesting. A whole storm, if you will. Losing fans, drawing the ire of the POTUS and seeing arrests come in by the dozen is not a recipe for success.
And yes, they’re successful. But watch some major network (not naming names) and tell me the coverage is about the sport. It isn’t. It’s about the protests, or the president, or the police. It’s tiring. I want to see kickoff returns and blown coverages, not the companies, well….blown coverage.
The NHL is about the NHL. It’s about an expansion team making it to the Stanley Cup Finals, it’s about a man who could never win the big one hugging the Stanley Cup like a puppy he lost as a child.
Wishing the Jets through the WCSF and getting to talk about them on CTV brought me back to why sports are there. It’s a distraction from all that garbage that pollutes everyday society.
MLB is fighting a war with old-school fans. Well, honestly, they’re fighting a war with themselves about the old-school vs the new-school. Game times are scrutinized. Everything analysts say bad about someone is either perceived as racist or, well, actually racist.
Domestic violence permeates the game. I see the distress about Roberto Osuna and Jose Reyes. It’s turned people away from the game, understandably. But the NHL remains in the background.
It stays there. And yes, there are problems with the NHL. And yes, people are people everywhere, and they’re going to do horrible things (see Voynov and Varlamov). But the NHL has avoided becoming their issues.
I am wholly unqualified to discuss these things. I’m not trying to lessen the discourse around concussions or domestic violence. Those things supersede a game. Any game.
But while the NFL fights its war, the MLB tries to get a lid on things and the NBA tries to find a way to keep more than four teams relevant, the NHL surprises us. It’s wholesome. I can’t stand Ovechkin and it was heartwarming to see how excited he was with the Cup.
The smallest market in the league has become a powerhouse, hopefully sustainably. Take that, Tampa Bay Rays. I know these things are bigger than sports at times. I get that.
But I also love sports, and I have since I was a child, as an escape from the terrors of reality. And while the analysts of other sports seem to harp on what’s wrong with them, the NHL seems to be about the NHL. And the Jets are now at the heart of it.