Some reading for NHL opening day

The NHL opens its season tonight, meaning the race is on to play 82 games to eliminate 14 of 30 teams from the playoffs. Which will end in June.

But league commissioner Gary Bettman opines that he's doing a pretty great job, according to an interesting profile in ESPN magazine. There's even talk the NHL will get a sweet new TV deal that would show games on a channel actually received by most cable viewers.

Of course, one reason that a pair of decent seats at a regular season hockey game may set you back $150 or more is that hockey gets fairly little money from TV. The sport is extremely reliant on gate revenues, the reason that the season is so long and the playoffs are played during some of the loveliest weather of the year.

And remember how exciting the Olympic tournament was in February? Bettman still isn't commiting NHL players to the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia, saying Sochi isn't such a nice place to visit. Yep, that's the best steward the NHL can find for the game. Pathetic.

--S.H.

Ice hockey: almost as popular as muzzleloading!

With the NHL playoffs in full swing, there's been a spate of media stories about interest in the sport. Exactly how much interest depends on who your listening to.

If, for example, you're listening to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, the "metrics" for pro hockey are good and improving -- and all is well in the land of pro hockey. 

If you're CBS Sports columnist Mike Freeman, there's something that doesn't smell right about a major league sport getting beaten regularly in the television ratings by reruns of "Homeboys in Outer Space."

My view: the TV ratings are a reflection of a deeper problem. No one plays ice hockey. Or those of us who do are freaks -- just 1.9 % of the population.

Take a look below. Dart throwing is more popular than ice hockey. So is loading up a muzzle and blowing the dickens out of something.

Where the hell do you get a muzzle? The pilgrim store? And don't those things blow up in your face?

The following charts are taken from the National Sporting Goods Assn. website. The gist of it: the as the nation's population keeps growing, fewer people are playing ice hockey.

Why does this matter?

If you want to create a fan base, I think you need people to play your sport. Granted, ice hockey will never be as easy to play as going to the local park to hit a softball or shoot some hoops. But most major metro areas do have rinks and all the guys I know who have started playing hockey in middle age remind of Edward Norton in "Fight Club" -- they've found what was missing.

So if I was a pro hockey executive, I'd be scanning the statistics below and perhaps not concern myself with the latest T-shirt toss or strobe light display. I'd be dialing up the local rink, asking the following question: "How do I get more of my fans playing the sport and spreading the gospel of ice hockey?"

How can anyone ever watch baseball again after that?

The final score of the Winter Olympics' gold medal hockey game on Sunday may be disappointing to those of us who badly wanted to witness Canada get whooped on their home ice.

Yet, it was such a thrilling game hat it's hard to be too bummed that the Frozen People of the North got the medal they needed to validate their when-will-my-balls-thaw existence.

At least you weren't stuck on the subway in Vancouver yesterday; check out the above video to see how that went.

My observations on the game:

1. There should not even be a discussion over whether the NHL should send its players to the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. The past week earned more publicity for the sport than the NHL can ever generate on its own with less-than-brilliant marketing techniques such as ice girls and strobe lights.

2. As my friend Scott pointed out in an extremely caffeinated phone call before the third period, did you happen to notice that the game was really exciting despite there being no fighting? Fighting isn't permitted in the international game and I didn't hear one person say they missed it. As I've written before, fighting may be fun sometimes, but it likely turns off more people than it turns on and gives a beautiful sport (which is plenty violent without fighting) a bad image. As long as fighting is allowed and encouraged by the NHL, the NHL will be treated as a minor league sport on par with tractor pulls, pig races and funnel cake eating contests.

3. Which, of course, is a shame. Can anyone who watched today's game imagine sitting in front of a TV for 2 1/2 hours watching a baseball game? Or golf? I think the only sport that comes close on excitement level is pro football and let's face it, today's game was at least 37.3 more times exciting than the Super Bowl -- which featured about 10 minutes of game action and three hours of nut-scratching (albeit nut-scratching in high def!).

4. I'm not so sure that Team Canada is better than Team USA. After two games plus part of an OT period, the U.S. had scored seven goals to Canada's six. The Canadians seemed to have a little more offensive flash throughout the Olympic tournament, but I don't think anyone can argue they were a dominant team. Yes, they slayed Russia. But Russia's goaltender had a mental meltdown that in the old says would have earned him hard time on the Siberian outpost.

Gary Bettman: dumb, a jackass or both?

You may have noticed something curious the past few days: suddenly a lot of people who couldn't give a damn about hockey are very interested. The U.S. defeat of Canada on Sunday night -- which was not even an elimination game -- earned television ratings higher than last year's game seven of the Stanley Cup finals between Detroit and Pittsburgh and was the highest rated sporting event in Canadian history.

That's hardly surprising. The Stanley Cup finals ended in the middle of June last year when days are long and winter is a distant memory for most of North America. Parts of the finals were telecast by a network, Versus, that many people do not get as part of their cable subscription package. Not that they're missing much. Versus normally specializes in fishing and hunting programs featuring some of the biggest rednecks known to man.

This is all a long way of saying it's quite odd that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has been so critical of NHL involvement in the Olympics. For one, in the 1990s, he championed suspending the NHL season to accommodate the Olympics. But since then the U.S. team sometimes struggled, hockey didn't get much quality television coverage and short-sighted NHL execs and owners began questioning the decision. Because, you know, no one should have to wait two weeks to see Nashville and Atlanta square off.

As a result, Bettman is saying the NHL may not send its players to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. That's strange. Last time I checked, hockey was a popular sport in Russia and I would expect one of the world's largest countries may enjoy watching some of the world's best hockey players duke it out.

Look. The opening of the Olympics to professional athletes is hardly ideal -- at least not in my view. In many sports, the Olympics are now just another stop on a long tour. In hockey, it's a shame that the national teams hardly have a chance to practice together before the tournament begins.