Pending resolution to lockout keeps NFL from losing games

The four-month lockout of its players by the National Football League in 2011 will never go down in history as good times for the richest league in North American sport.
Yet the fact that a settlement is imminent after weeks of constructive, behind-the-scenes negotiations should shape the way we perceive the NFL, a $9 billion a year sport industry sector that has overtaken baseball as America’s pastime and is the single biggest sports marketing juggernaut on the continent.

It’s important because it appears that the NFL will once again avoid losing games to a work stoppage, something that cannot be said of the other three major North American leagues, especially over the past 24 years since football's last work stoppage in 1987.

The NBA is in its second lockout in 13 years and third in history, with the most recent one having cost pro basketball 32 regular season games in 1998-’99. The NHL has lost a season and a half in the past 17 years, including 2004-’05 when the full season and Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled due to its second lockout in the span of a decade. Finally, Major League Baseball saw its World Series classic cancelled on account of the players strike of 1994, the last time two leagues were in concurrent work stoppages.

Yet the NFL appears to know better. Outside of 1987, in which it lost one game and played three others with replacement players , the NFL has a relatively unblemished record when it comes to losing games to labour crises and has never done so through a lockout. It is true it lost seven weeks on a player strike back in 1982, but that season was salvaged with a 16-team playoff tournament. In 1974, a players strike was resolved before training camps began.

In 2011, with television ratings and revenues at an all-time high, it was a risky proposition to chance the NFL's future growth, let alone its status as the biggest sport in North America.

Neither the NFL nor the NFLPA should feel proud of failing to get a deal done before the CBA expired in March. That represented a failure on both sides.

Yet kudos should go to both the owners and the players for understanding what kind of impact cancelled games could have had on the privileged position all parties involved hold in the fantasy world of professional sport. And it is exactly that - privileged.

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One-two punch of CFL and NHL free agency make Canada Day hot

Basketball fans can't jump in as much this year on account of the NBA lockout triggered last night, but nonetheless, Canada Day is carving itself a niche as a hot day on the Canadian sports calendar.The one-two punch of the kick-off to a new Canadian Football League season and the media and fan frenzy that is free agency in the National Hockey League make July 1st one of the most intriguing sports days each year, on and off the field of play.

It's been cranked up a few degrees in fan attention thanks to the increasingly explicit positioning of the CFL kick-off around Canada Day weekend. Made more formal over the past two years, it is part of CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon's smart campaign to promote the CFL on the strength of its Canadiana and heritage. A kick-off on Canada Day is as natural as maple syrup and it goes a long way towards driving home that "CFL as Canadian culture" message.

By definition, TSN becomes the fulcrum for a lion's share of the interest. It is the exclusive English-language home of the CFL on TSN and its hockey panel is the most-watched for coverage of day one of NHL free agency. It's certainly one of the biggest days of the year for the 27-year-old all-sports network and its French-language counterpart, RDS.

In fact, TSN and RDS are arguably front-and-centre on two of the biggest days in Canadian sport each year - the CFL's Canada Day Doubleheader on July 1st and the biggest single-day annual event in our landscape, the Grey Cup on the final Sunday in November (both the CFL's Grey Cup and the NFL's Super Bowl are in the 6 to 7 million range as the top annual events in terms of average national audience on Canadian television).

Only January 1st rivals July 1st as fixed-day destination television, although even that is not as "fixed": Witness the NHL's decision to move its NBC Winter Classic to July 2nd next year and let the NFL do its playoff thing on New Year's Day (assuming, of course, that saner heads prevail and the U.S. football season goes on without a lockout hitch).

For now, July 1st is truly Canada Day when it comes to sports, sports television and the sports web.

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NHL shows gains but NBA still wins 2010 television sweepstakes

Having game 5 of the NHL's 2010 Stanley Cup finals go up against game 2 of the NBA Finals Sunday night might have been unfortunate scheduling for both leagues and their fans but it did offer up a great chance to compare hockey apples with basketball oranges, so to speak, when it comes to television drawing power in North America.

Among the findings that stick with me are that NBA basketball is almost as popular among Americans as NHL hockey is to Canadians, at least when it comes to this spring's match-ups between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals and the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup.

The head-to-head showdown showed that on a per capita basis, Canadians are this year 5.75 times as likely to watch Stanley Cup championship hockey than those living south of the border. It also demonstrated that Americans outwatch -- again per capita -- Canadians by 5.43 to 1 when it comes to NBA Finals basketball.

On this given Sunday, the NHL outscored the NBA on Canadian television by a 13:1 margin. In the U.S., however, the NBA beat the NHL by a ratio of 2.66:1 (approaching threefold). Hoops also won the continental battle by a margin of almost 60 per cent, with 16.0 million North Americans watching the Celtics beat the Lakers and 9.7 million tuning in to see Chicago move to within one game of its first Stanley Cup in 49 years (which the Blackhawks clinched in overtime tonight to win in six games).

The television scorecard Sunday looked like this...

                               NBA                              NHL
                               LA/Boston                                Chicago/Philadelphia
                               Game 2                                     Game 5


North America      16.0 million viewers         9.7 million viewers


United States        15.7 million viewers         5.9 million viewers
                              ESPN on ABC                             NBC

Canada                  291 thousand viewers     3.8 million viewers
                              TSN                                            CBC/RDS

The head-to-head comparison is particularly interesting in the U.S., where four of the top eight television markets in the country are directly engaged in the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals. This year's NHL and NBA championship series span the second-largest media market in the country, LA (5.7 million television households), #3 Chicago (3.5 million) and #4 Philadelphia (2.9 million), along with #8 Boston (2.4 million).

Sunday continued to show how heavily the NHL relies on the strength of its local markets when it comes to U.S. television ratings, with more than a third of those Americans tuning into Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final coming from either champion Chicago (where local market shares hit 40%) or Philly (almost 30%).

The New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls could theoretically drive larger combined local audiences if they found a way to return to the NBA Finals, but for ESPN on ABC, there is no stronger match-up in terms of national television interest than the NBA's two heritage brands, the Celtics and Lakers.

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NHL needs destination television in the U.S. for its Stanley Cup showcase

darrenrovell1: R-A-T-I-N-G-S. Spelling Bee beats game 4 of Stanley Cup Final -- 4M to 3.1M viewers (From sport business reporter Darren Rovell of CNBC June 7th on Twitter.com comparing Saturday's Scripps national spelling competition on ABC with Friday's NHL championship game on cable carrier Versus).

The National Hockey League would be well-served by a simple goal when it sits down to negotiate its next U.S. broadcasting contracts, either with current rightsholders NBC and Versus or some other combination of incumbents, newcomers or returning partners.

The "One Goal" -- to borrow the simple marketing slogan of the Chicago Blackhawks -- should be to ensure its Stanley Cup finals are carried by one network, from start to finish. Its priority should be to deliver destination television to better serve its existing fans and help lure new ones.

As it stands, the NHL is alone among the major professional sports leagues in North America in relegating even one game in its ultimate championship series to cable television alone.

Granted, the environment is changing and cable juggernauts such as ESPN are outbidding networks on a variety of fronts -- including varsity sports -- and they do so on the strength of dual revenue streams (advertising and subscription fees) and the quality of their all-sports audience demographics.

Yet only CBS, FOX and NBC are in the discussion for the NFL's conference championships and the game's greatest showcase, the Super Bowl. FOX is the exclusive custodian of Major League Baseball's classic, the World Series. The ESPN on ABC simulcast platform is locked in and a winner with the NBA Finals.

The Stanley Cup, however, does not have one consistent U.S. television home. In the current 2010 slugfest, NBC claimed games 1, 5, 6 and 7, while Versus picked up games 2, 3 and 4. It's a sharing formula they've used throughout the existing NHL rightsholder agreement, not only in the Stanley Cup showcase but throughout the post-season.

It is not the right solution for the NHL in the U.S. market and for the Stanley Cup as the game's marquee event.

A stronger rights deal in 2012 with NBC, one which engaged the network throughout the Stanley Cup final, would make the most sense (and while you're at it, graduating from the ranks of pure revenue-sharing into rights fees would be a worthy side goal with the Peacock network).

Getting another major network to take ownership of the league's championship series would be the next best bet. Failing those options, having a cable network designated as the go-to carrier of all seven games would be better than the current on-again, off-again relationship in which Stanley Cup final games literally bounce back and forth between network television on NBC and second-tier cable on Versus.

It is true that -- despite the baton approach used by NBC and Versus in passing games back and forth -- the Stanley Cup in particular and the 2010 playoffs in general is delivering to the NHL its best U.S. audiences in almost 15 years. Progress has been made, with even Versus declaring record ratings (topped off by Philadelphia's overtime win in game 3; the most-watched program in the cable network's young history).

That's the point. The product can finally say it deserves better. Much like its overall economic success despite the financial basketcases it carries in the U.S. sunbelt, the NHL needs to ask what could be with an even better roster of American broadcast partners on even better terms.

The most important contract condition is simple: destination television on one network for its Stanley Cup. That way, the sport's centrepiece will never again be O-U-T-D-R-A-W-N by Spelling Bee.

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Brendan Shanahan proves to be a solid PR asset for the National Hockey League

Strong communications skills and media capabilities have become increasingly important over the past 10 to 15 years for senior executives in general and Chief Executive Officers in particular. That's true in mainstream business but it's arguably even more the case in the business of sport, where the relationship between consumers (fans) and product or company (franchises or leagues) is unique.

In most cases in the regular private sector, only shareholders feel a vested interest in the company in which they own stock. There are some corporations whose products command a higher brand of loyalty and connection (Apple comes to mind) but few if any can compare to the "equity" that fans take in their favourite club or league.

The hard core fans feel a sense of ownership in their team. They care about their favourite league. The best franchises and leagues get that and relate to their fans and their larger audiences as if they are a public trust or a community asset.

After 17 years on the job, however, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman has yet to crack the code on public and media relations. Specifically, he has not mastered any sense of relating to hockey fans through television.

How badly he wrestles with the media in general was so brutally on display in his CBC television appearance with Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean last week. Maybe too much time in the sun that day was the problem, but it was one of the poorest television performances by a professional sport commissioner I've ever seen.

Bettman on Hockey Night in Canada June 2nd, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww3md8DvoTY

Bettman was alternatively defensive and prickly, even in the studios of the television network that pays more for NHL rights than any other carrier in the world. He was clearly annoyed with MacLean and a line of questioning that focused on ownership troubles in a variety of NHL markets, most notably those in the U.S. sunbelt, instead of what he was hoping would highlight the terrific overall economic performance of the league.

OK. I would have encouraged MacLean to acknowledge the NHL is having record financial results in spite of the basket cases in the southern U.S. and simply raise the matter of what could be if those problem childs were replaced by teams in northern U.S. markets and in Canada, which has never been more bullish for the NHL and which is driving in a big way the league's overall success.

That being said, it's unfathomable to me that Bettman handled the CBC piece the way he did and that he is so bad at media and public speaking despite almost two decades in the commissioner's chair.

Thankfully for the NHL, it has some other emerging executive assets who could help strengthen the league's brand as they grow into their roles and gain more exposure in front of the camera. None is more obvious and more well-equipped to do so than NHL vice-president of business and hockey development, former star player Brendan Shanahan.

Shanahan's interview last night on Hockey Night in Canada was as good as Bettman's was bad earlier in the week. The Stanley Cup champion and surefire Hall of Famer was open, courteous, insightful and even humourous. The contrasts between the two interviews -- and how they reflected the NHL they were each representing -- could not have been bigger.

Shanahan on Hockey Night in Canada June 6th, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFl89kgzMo

Shanahan was a prototype power forward in his years with the Hartford Whalers, St. Louis Blues, New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers.

Sunday night's interview reminded us how well he handles the public side of the business and how much value he could bring to the table for the NHL as its own power forward in media relations and television.

It also laid bare how weak Bettman is on the same fronts and how difficult it will be for the league's frontman to change his stripes when he clearly does not enjoy that part of his role as NHL commissioner. The right strategy for the NHL -- especially with a new round of collective bargaining upcoming -- would be to showcase the likes of Shanahan every opportunity it gets.

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With matchups like this, series sweeps are not what the leagues or their broadcast partners want

Seven-game championship series are always the cat's meow when it comes to driving fan interest and television audiences. But it's even more intriguing a proposition this year for the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and their U.S. broadcast partners.

That's why Claude Giroux's overtime goal in tonight's 4-3 win for the Philadelphia Flyers over the Chicago Blackhawks had to come as a relief for the NHL, Versus, NBC and anyone in all-sports television and radio who cares about hockey.

The clutch goal prevented the Blackhawks from taking a 3-0 stranglehold against the Flyers and likely reducing the length of this year's Stanley Cup final to five or even the minimum four games (which would have prevented it from gaining another second of air time on NBC).

The NHL and its broadcast partners are even more interested in a long series this year because the 2010 final can boast a direct local market engagement of almost 6.5 million television households. It pits the third-largest media market in the country (Chicago, with 3.5 million television households) against the fourth-largest (Philadelphia, with 2.95 million).

It's the best Stanley Cup showdown in terms of the Nielsen's ratings company's Designated Market Areas since 2003 when the New Jersey Devils and the Anaheim Ducks brought together the New York and Los Angeles DMAs and ranks third all-time in terms of television households (behind New Jersey/Anaheim in 2003 and New Jersey/Dallas in 2000).

Given that it showcases two American cities that actually care about hockey, it's the strongest U.S. hockey market match-up since Detroit swept Philadelphia in 1997 and -- if it lasts at least six games -- will drive the best American television ratings since the New York Rangers won the 1994 Stanley Cup in a seven-game thriller against the Vancouver Canucks.

Yet that's only part of the story. The Chicago-Philadelphia Stanley Cup final and the Los Angeles-Boston NBA final make this spring a high-water mark for sports television and radio, combining to make up one of the largest aggregate local market engagements in the history of the NHL and NBA championship series.

The 6.5 million TV households available to the NHL, Versus and NBC are joined by the more than 8 million households in LA and Boston that are being targeted by the NBA and ESPN on ABC. That's almost 15 million U.S. television households directly engaged with the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals and all of the sports television and radio news and talk shows that come along for the ride.

It might not be the biggest-ever local market combination in sheer overall capacity (Denver, New Jersey, LA and Philadelphia in 2001 and Detroit, Raleigh, LA and New Jersey in 2002 rated higher in terms of cumulative television households at north of 16 million each year). There's no denying, however, that this year's showdowns -- third overall in aggregate DMA size -- are anchored in a final four that includes two of the very best American hockey markets and arguably the two greatest big basketball markets in the U.S.

It's not just quantity this year, it's quality of market demographics for the NHL and NBA. Chicago-Philly for hockey and LA-Boston for hoops are dream television match-ups on both counts.

ESPN on ABC will bring the best-of-seven final between the NBA's two heritage brands -- the Lakers and Celtics -- to those strong local markets and to an interested national television audience. Meanwhile, the NHL is basking in arguably its best-ever U.S. hockey market match-up.

Now if only more Americans could find the mid-week Stanley Cup games on Versus.

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Improbable Stanley Cup playoff run allows Montreal Canadiens' centennial to resonate

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: the most important part of the business of sport is the business of winning. It's certainly the most persuasive part.

Winning is the best marketing. It's all about substance and cliches such as walking the walk and talking the talk. If business success in sport is one part product and one part marketing, the product is by far the bigger part.

That's why those who make the Montreal Canadiens the best-marketed franchise in Canada and arguably the best in the National Hockey League can thank their player roster for validating the 100th anniversary festivities in which the oldest hockey club in the world has invested so much of their resources and our attention.

This year's unexpected playoff run -- to the fifth game of the National Hockey League's eastern conference finals -- has given substance to the centennial celebrations that have become the club's staple industry the past 18 months; if not the past five years.

No amount of clever marketing can replace the inspirational impact of winning on the ice.

In this case, the Montreal Canadiens have done everything imaginable to mark the 100-year milestone with a sense of thoughtfulness, history and class: by retiring a series of sweater numbers in the five years leading to the 2008-'09 centennial; using last year to showcase and market a cross-section of the club's retro jerseys dating back to their first game in 1909; producing a 100th anniversary DVD; and culminating everything with the actual anniversary game in November of 2009, which was an unprecedented presentation of pomp and circumstance in Canadian -- if not North American -- sport.

Yet the 2008-'09 centennial season missed one important piece: a winning season...a bridge to that long and storied history... a sense of connection to the lineage represented best by Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur...and of course the illustrious tradition of 24 Stanley Cups.

After finishing first in the eastern conference and reaching the second round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs (before losing to the same Philadelphia Flyers), the Habs faltered badly during the Centennial season, finishing eighth and enduring the embarassment of a four-game sweep at the hands of their arch rivals, the Boston Bruins, in the first round. The very glory years that were being celebrated in 2008-'09 seemed so long ago.

These past two months in 2010, however, the players and the team ignited what the entire Centennial was designed to provide; pride of association, memories of yesteryear and what it felt like to be in the hunt for the trophy Canadian sports fans cherish most.

It's been 17 years since the Canadiens last reached the Stanley Cup finals and won. It could be another 17 years or more before they do so again. But Montreal's run in what Stanley Cup-winning head coach Mike Babcock calls a "marathon of hope" was a final touch this year to the 100th anniversary celebrations that was better than anyone in their front office could have scripted.

It has not only given the organization and its fans a sense of hope and optimism but a restored sense of identity for a team that, for the first time in its great history, has gone this long between championships.

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Business Tale of the Tape: Chicago and Philadelphia makes for solid Stanley Cup final

The end of the Montreal Canadiens' improbable run to the 2010 Stanley Cup finals means smaller Canadian audience numbers for CBC and dramatically lower ratings for RDS, but it makes for a solid showdown between two of the strongest American brands in the National Hockey League. And in that light, the championship round bringing together the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers is great news for the NHL's U.S. television rights holders, NBC and Versus.

It's a worthy follow-up to last year's Stanley Cup final between the eventual 2009 champion Pittsburgh Penguins and the 2008 winners, the Detroit Red Wings; the two most popular road teams in the NHL over the past three years.

There's no Sidney Crosby in this year's Stanley Cup final, but a quick look at the sport business tale of the tape pitting the Blackhawks against the Flyers suggests it might be the best U.S. match-up in at least a decade based on sheer hockey market strength:

Franchise valuation - According to Forbes Magazine, this Stanley Cup series showcases the fifth and seventh highest-valuated franchises in the NHL. Philadelphia is valued at $273 million US while Chicago comes in at $258 M (and rising as the hottest property in the NHL). In 2009, Detroit was fourth while small-market Pittsburgh was middle of the pack.

Overall revenues: It's a meeting between two of the top eight revenue-producing franchises in the NHL. After quadrupling their sponsorship sales since 2007, the Blackhawks are tied for sixth (with Boston) at $106 million US while the Flyers are eighth at $101 million.

Box office revenues: It's #3 (Philly) against #9 (Chicago), each driving well more than $50 million of their revenues at the gate.

Ticket prices: Philadelphia is top-five in the NHL (at $60.25) while seeing the Blackhawks at the United Center is still one of the best bargains in professional hockey at $46.80 (19th overall).

Home attendance: After ranking 29th out of 30 four years ago, the Blackhawks make the Madhouse on Madison the biggest building in the NHL, packing it with more 22,000 fans per game and leading the NHL in attendance for the second straight year. The Flyers average 19,503 at the Wachovia Center; sixth-best in the league.

Road attendance: This final brings together the seventh (Chicago) and 14th (Philadelphia) most popular teams on the road this season.

Media market size: In addition to Versus and NBC, the NHL's U.S.-based sponsors are smiling as they contemplate the third and fourth largest designated market areas (television DMAs) on the continent. Chicago is #3 and Philadelphia is #4.

Regional television audiences: Chicago and Philadelphia were two of the top five U.S. hockey television markets during the 2009-'10 regular season. The Blackhawks drew an average regional audience of 196,800 viewers on Comcast and WGN while the Flyers attracted 147,900. That's #6 and #11 overall in the NHL and #2 and #5 in the U.S.

Hockey market: Forbes Magazine's research suggests this is a clash between the fifth and seventh strongest hockey markets in the NHL and the third and fifth best in the U.S. (based on franchise value attributed to city and market size).

Simply put, the 2010 Stanley Cup final features two of the best marketed U.S. franchises in two of the best hockey markets in the U.S. When one considers both market clout and brand appeal, it's arguably the best U.S. match-up since the Flyers last reached the finals in 1997 against the Detroit Red Wings.

It also comes with important intangibles based on history and tradition: one is an Original Six franchise that hasn't won a Cup since 1961 and the other a first-wave 1969 expansion team that hasn't done so since 1975. It's that hunger -- shared by the respective organizations and their fans -- which will make for good storylines throughout the series beginning Saturday at the United Center.

And good stories make for good ratings.

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If Gary Bettman cannot see the opportunity for the NHL, someone else will

One of the principal jobs of the commissioner of the National Hockey League – or any professional sports league for that matter – is to create value for his member franchises and their owners. Commissioners do that by creating league-wide conditions that grow the business of their member clubs.

The more revenues franchises generate, the greater their business valuation. When more franchises make more money, the average value increases throughout the league and that is good news for NHL club owners in the same way rising home prices and growing ownership equity is a boon for home owners.

So when it comes to franchise values, we give NHL commissioner Gary Bettman credit where it’s due. Values have grown under Bettman’s 17-year tenure several fold.

The question for any seasoned business valuator -- or any fan who cares about the game for that mattter -- is, however, what could be?

When one considers where the league could be without the stresses -- both public and private -- surrounding a group of under-performing hockey businesses in the southern U.S., Bettman's record raises red flags and deserves further scrutiny.

That’s because every single one of the NHL’s major business indicators – attendance, ticket prices, box office, merchandise sales, sponsorship sales, television audiences and revenues – would be even higher if the league had less U.S. sunbelt franchises and more Canadian or northern U.S. franchises.

Why Bettman has not pro-actively addressed the issue is one of the big blind spots in his leadership of the NHL. Why the NHL’s governors – the owners of the league’s 30 clubs – have not pushed more aggressively for solutions that would strengthen the league and improve their own lots considerably is an even bigger mystery.

If it’s true that you’re only as strong as your weakest link, the Phoenix Coyotes are a problem for the NHL. So are the Atlanta Thrashers. Throw in the case of the Florida Panthers – where less people are watching on FSN Florida (an average of 13,400 viewers per game) than are attending games in person (15,000 on a good night) – and you have at least three teams mired in red ink in questionable hockey markets.

Why not play to your strength? Why not license your product in markets where it is being gobbled up in record numbers? Why not replace your weak links with solid performers?

“The Case for Canada” report outlines just how bullish the Canadian market is for the NHL brand of hockey, especially in the period since the lockout in 2004-'05.

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/could+cash+return+roots/3060451/story.html

It suggests that if the NHL relocated three of its weakest southern U.S. franchises to Canada, their individual franchise values would increase by more than 50 per cent and the league’s average team valuation would jump by $11 million US. It also submits that the combined revenues of the three relocated franchises would rise by $100 million per year, average attendance would grow by 6,000 more fans per game per franchise (or 738,000 more per season) and regional television audiences would increase twenty-fold. Yes, twenty-fold.

Yet more than anything, the report by TheSportMarket.biz and The Vancouver Sun makes a compelling case for the landing of at least one more NHL team in Canada. Plain and simple, the numbers clearly show how the NHL, its member franchises, broadcast partners and other corporate stakeholders – not to mention fans of the game in Canada – would be well-served if the NHL shifted its centre of gravity northward.

The proof is in the pudding of the hockey markets themselves. Considering market size, demographics and other attributes including affinity for sports in general and hockey in particular (as Forbes Magazine does in its annual list of NHL franchise values), the average NHL market contributes $84 million to its franchise valuation (out of about $210 million in average overall value).

Sun belt markets are considerably weaker; the market attributes of Phoenix, Atlanta and Florida for hockey average out at only $48.3 million according to Forbes.com. That's about half the average U.S. hockey market value and about 40 per cent that of the average Canadian market.

Those numbers exemplify how the sunbelt teams are dragging down the average value of NHL franchises the way shabby houses devalue entire neighbourhoods.

The Case for Canada is clear. It’s your move commissioner Bettman.

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Steve Nash is to Canadian basketball what Gretzky was to U.S. hockey

They’re both Canadian sports icons. One is arguably the best player in the history of the National Hockey League and the game’s greatest ambassador in the United States. The other the best Canadian basketball player ever produced and the game’s face in Canada.

Wayne Gretzky was heroic in Edmonton and Canada and became hockey’s big thing in the U.S. Steve Nash is a big deal in Phoenix and throughout the U.S. and is an even bigger deal here in Canada.

In team sport in particular and professional sport in general, they will go down in history as among our country’s greatest exports.

Who is the bigger export presents an interesting debate. One could suggest Gretzky has the edge because he skated in the large markets of Los Angeles and New York and defined Canada most because he played hockey.

Others would point to the bigger footprint held by basketball in the U.S. and give the nod to Nash, saying his talent has been showcased on the larger continental stage of the NBA.

What is clear is that the two Canadians have served as the single most important ambassadors in their respective sports in their generations; with Gretzky popularizing hockey in the U.S. and Nash making basketball more relevant in his own country.

Nash is the most famous face of the Phoenix Suns franchise and has become one of the highest-profile players in the NBA on the strength of two league MVP crowns and the kind of durability and excellence which has led his team to the western conference finals against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Nash and the Suns are in tough against Kobe and the Lakers, who appear destined to reach their third successive NBA Finals and set up a rematch of the 2008 championship round won by the Boston Celtics.

Yet none of that reduces the Nash factor in Canada when it comes to interest in the NBA. When he plays – both during the regular season and especially in these playoffs when the Suns have been a going concern – Canadians pay attention. And that goes for sports editors and sports directors as well as fans watching on television.

When he doesn’t, we don’t. The NBA has been fortunate to score 175,000 viewers on TSN during these playoffs and hoops on Canadian cable television rarely crosses the 250,000 audience threshold. With Nash on the small screen, however, the average Canadian audiences should climb to north of 400,000 if the Suns can make things interesting in Phoenix.

It’s the kind of personal brand appeal – one shaped in part by his on-court talent and leadership and in part by his record of community investment, charity work and social activism – that is all too rare these days in professional sport.

It’s the kind of appeal that makes a great template for Canadian athletes and athletes the world over in any team sport.

It’s the kind of appeal that makes you understand how important Steve Nash is to Canadian basketball and wonder what kind of transformational impact he would have had on the game in this country had he been acquired by the old Vancouver Grizzlies or the Toronto Raptors at any time in his career.

Now that’s fantasy basketball worth considering.

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The NHL's Chicago Blackhawks represent a remarkable turnaround...both on and off the ice

The on-ice turnaround scored by the National Hockey League's Chicago Blackhawks over the past three years is impressive. A five-season exile from the Stanley Cup playoffs ended last year and the Blackhawks red, black and gold colour palette is likely to be a going concern for much of the new decade.

Adept drafting, smart trades and a couple of prized free agent acquisitions have given Chicago fans a few reasons for both short and long-term optimism. After all, in the business of sport, nothing is more fundamentally important -- in most markets -- than the business of winning.

Yet the on-ice makeover is matched -- if not exceeded -- by the remarkable turnaround the Original Six franchise has achieved off the ice. In Chicago, product and marketing have met to create a one-two punch as balanced and lethal as that of any NHL franchise in the U.S. (See NHL Composite Power Rankings 2009-'10 http://www.facebook.com/thesportmarket?v=photos&ref=ts#!/photo.php?pid=3724749&id=280702824731)

The combination has taken the Blackhawks from second-to-last in NHL attendance in 2006-'07 to first overall the past two years.

The marketing part has been handled brilliantly by Blackhawks' president John McDonough (hired in November of 2007); fully-empowered by second generation owner Rocky Wirtz (who took over from his dad, the late Bill Wirtz the previous month) and complemented over the past two years by business operations senior vice-president Jay Blunk (January of 2008).

The Blackhawks are back and they're back on the strength of comprehensive, brand-based marketing; an integrated strategy in which the NHL's Chicago foothold is firing on all of the most important cylinders in business operations. Blackhawks marketing has at least 10 streams, none more important than the first three (product promotion, broadcast platform and sense of history):

1. Product marketing: Chicago has a good, young team and Blackhawks marketers make sure everyone knows that;

2. Broadcast marketing: McDonough and company understand the best way to expose their new product is through television and radio. WGN-TV, Comcast Sportsnet and WGN Radio are key partners in the off-ice turnaround because they've put the team back on the Chicago sports map. Regular season games draw sellouts of 21,000 plus to the United Center and almost 10 times that on television;

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=399165796504&comments&ref=mf#!/photo.php?pid=3769385&id=280702824731

3. Heritage marketing: The repatriation of Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito was not only long overdue, it brought back a generation of 'hawks fans who were as estranged as the former stars were over the span of three decades;

4. Partnership marketing: An NHL team in an American market can only benefit from aligning itself with the other professional franchises in the city. McDonough linked the Blackhawks with the Cubbies (his alma mater), White Sox, Bears and the Bulls, their United Center partners owned by Jerry Reinsdorf. The partnership approach culminated in the 2009 Winter Classic at Wrigley Field and made special event marketing part of the mix for the Blackhawks;

5. Cross marketing: The partnerships also set the stage for creative cross-promotions with the city's top stars in other sports. Even the campaigns that didn't make it to television -- most notably the 2009 series featuring the Blackhawks and da Bears that was banned by the NFL -- caused a stir on the web and in chat rooms, demonstrating the NHL team was prepared to ride the air baloon of their more famous football cousins;

6. Personality marketing: The Blackhawks are ultimately selling a team brand, but they know that team brand is defined in large part by the personal brands of their players. The team's star tandem on the ice, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, are the star tandem in television, radio and print advertising. Phase 2: Making Hollywood celebs such as Vince Vaughn part of the personality of the franchise;

7. Theme marketing: The simple and hockey-themed tagline One Goal, crafted by global ad agency Ogilvy Mather, has served as the Blackhawks' mantra for the past two years;

8. Entertainment marketing: The new Blackhawks have made hockey cool again. From opening anthems to goal celebrations, the United Center is the Madhouse on Madison. Just ask visiting teams stabbed with the Chelsea Dagger after every Chicago goal. Is there a more distinctive goal celebration song in the NHL right now? (See and hear The Fratellis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEXHeTcxQy4)

9.  Social media marketing: In the hometown and state of Barrack Obama, the Blackhawks are all over Facebook, Twitter and YouTube;

10. Cause marketing: The Blackhawks have always made money in Chicago. Now they're sharing the wealth and investing in causes that matter to the community. Just more reasons for Chicago to care about the Blackhawks.

Add it all up and you've got the best marketed franchise in the United States and one of the top three in the NHL. The Blackhawks have already been acknowledged as among the fastest-rising sports properties in the United States (see Champions of The Sport Market 2008 http://www.thesportmarket.biz/pdf/Champions_of_Sport_2008_International.pdf). With a solid on-ice product and dynamic off-ice marketing, don't count on them going away anytime soon.

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The NHL on television in 2009-'10: Canadian Bulls and Southern U.S. Bears

When more Canadians watch the NHL Draft Lottery on TSN (an average national audience of 556,000 this year) than Americans watch actual live game action during the regular season on Versus (averaging 297,000 in 2009-'10), it puts into perspective how the National Hockey League in general and NHL television in particular is a tale of two countries.

The NHL and the NHL on TV is hot in Canada. Not so much in the U.S., especially the further south you go.

Depending on how you look at it, Canadians are 10 to 20 times more likely to watch the NHL on TV than our American friends to the south. In a market 10 times the size of Canada, the NHL averages 1.6 million viewers on NBC during the regular season, less than the early game average of 1.8 million CBC drives through its Hockey Night in Canada franchise. Similarly, TSN (714,000) outperforms Versus (297,000) on cable, more than two-to-one in absolute terms and more than 20:1 per capita.

There's no better picture, however, of how different a proposition the NHL is in Canada compared to the U.S. than in the local and regional television ratings of the league's 30 clubs. Despite some good gains in the era of the NHL Winter Classic on NBC, the U.S. market is still a tough nut to crack for the NHL. If Canada is a rampaging bull market for NHL hockey -- which it is -- then the southern U.S. is a lame bear.

It's all mapped out in this week's Helijet Top Ten Bull Pen at http://www.thesportmarket.biz/ and www.Facebook.com/TheSportMarket (which lists the Top Ten, Middle Ten and Bottom Ten NHL television markets).

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We'll let the listing of regional television audiences in the NHL speak for itself. What we will do is give you our Top Ten takes on where the NHL is at in television in Canada compared to the U.S.:

10 - The top four television markets in the NHL during the 2009-'10 regular season were Canada's four largest media markets: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. They all trumped larger U.S. designated market areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago;

9 - Six of the top nine regional television audiences in the NHL were held by Canada's six NHL franchises;

8 - The hottest U.S. NHL television market is Pittsburgh, home of Sidney Crosby and the defending champion Penguins. Fox Sportsnet Pittsburgh this year drove 93,000 households and 214,100 viewers per regular season game. Next in line are the fast-rising Chicago Blackhawks on Comcast Sportsnet and WGN TV (196,800 viewers per game) and the seemingly perennial Stanley Cup-contending Detroit Red Wings (186,500);

7 - There's parity on the ice but not in television ratings: the NHL's big three when it comes to regional television numbers -- Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks -- have larger audiences than the next 10 clubs combined (1,742,900 to 1,673,700);

6 - The Canadian regional television average audience is 383,167, which is more than two-and-a-half times the NHL average of 141,040 and almost five times the U.S. regional average of 80,508;

5 - The NHL's so-called Original Six franchises (Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago) average 313,333 viewers per regional telecast. The last six NHL expansions average 34,583. The last six relocated franchises average 78,233 (but that drops to an average of 49,620 when you take out Calgary);

4 - The average Canadian NHL television market is more than 10 times stronger than the average U.S. sun belt TV market. And that's in absolute terms (383K to 34K);

3 - Canada's six NHL franchises draw more regional television viewers than all 24 U.S. clubs combined (2,299,000 cumulative in Canada compared to 1,932,200 aggregate in the U.S.). In fact, the top four Canadian teams (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary) do that with 1,964,200 combined;

2 - It takes the NHL's bottom 11 television markets (cumulatively representing average viewership of 376,500 per game) to come close to matching the Vancouver Canucks' team average of 398,500 on Rogers Sportsnet Pacific. You have to add five more NHL clubs -- for a total of 16 or more than half of the league -- to rival the 650K plus regional averages of Toronto and Montreal (with the asterix that the Canadiens' regional rightsholder is RDS, a French-language national cable carrier);

1 - The Florida Panthers, playing before the smallest TV audiences in the NHL, have to log 49 regionally-televised games (1.2 seasons of home games or more than a half-season of total games) to match what the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens each draw in ONE game.

When you rate the NHL's other bear TV markets (Atlanta, where it takes 36 Thrasher telecasts to equal one Habs game, or Tampa, Nashville or Raleigh, where it takes those teams 26 games to match the Leafs, or Phoenix, 25 games), it paints a picture that at some point the league will have to address: its southern U.S. plan in general and sunbelt strategy in particular.

When less people are watching your product on television than they are in-arena -- which is the case in Miami -- you have a fundamental problem. Not enough people care.

That's not the problem everywhere in the U.S., of course. It's not so much the issue in southern California, at least when the Ducks and Kings are winning. It's not a problem in the northern U.S. markets.  And, it's certainly not a challenge in Canada, where we drink the NHL on televison like we do beer.

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Halak puts an exclamation mark on one of the best opening rounds in Stanley Cup history

The opening round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup championships produced a series of notable storylines, including:

• entertaining hockey, combining both a potent offensive display of 5.9 goals per game (the highest since 1996) and some superb goaltending, most notably that of Jaroslav Halak, who stood on his head to lead the Montreal Canadiens past Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals; 
• tight hockey, with a total of 49 games in the first round (the most since 1995) and 12 of them overtime results (the most since 2001). There wasn't a single four-game sweep, only one five-game series, five six-gamers and two that went the distance to seventh games;
• unpredictable hockey, with road teams winning 27 of the 49 games and four series going to the lower-seeded teams.

Yet with all due respect to the resurgent Detroit Red Wings, the resilient Boston Bruins and the surprising Philadelphia Flyers, the single biggest storyline of the conference quarter-finals is Halak and the Habs. The Slovak Olympian goaltender is one of the major reasons why this first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs has to go down as one of the best in modern history.

This is the first time an eighth-seed has knocked off a top-seed after falling behind three games to one. But it's more than No. 8 ousting No. 1 within a conference, it's actually No. 16 in the playoffs eliminating No. 1 overall.

That's why Halak has already earned himself a special place in the 100-year history of the Canadiens (and in the hearts of their fans). He stole the last three games for Montreal and his performance in game six at the Bell Centre was one for the ages, invoking comparisons with rookie Ken Dryden and the 1971 Stanley Cup champions and rookie Patrick Roy and the 1986 champion Canadiens.

Dryden and Roy made history because they won three and four series, respectively. Halak is only one-quarter of the way to the peak of Mount Stanley. What he has done, however, is what Dryden did 39 years ago: beat the top-ranked team in the Stanley Cup tournament. And even with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins on the horizon, it's a start that's intriguing for Canadiens boosters and, even moreso, for Halak's agent, Allan Walsh.

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A sidelined Ovechkin hurts U.S. audiences but not necessarily overall North American numbers

There will be much hand-wringing over the Washington Capitals' stunning exit in the first-round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup tournament. Most of it will be in the Caps' front office, but a close second will be the disappointment shared by U.S. television rights holders Versus and NBC, both of which were loving their first-round playoff ratings and must have been salivating at the prospects of an eastern conference showdown between Alex Ovechkin and the Caps and Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

That Ovechkin-Crosby is no longer in the cards will also cause some long faces at the NHL's corporate offices in New York. And that's understandable from those who bank on star marketing to build a larger footprint in the U.S.

Yet if it is job one of the commissioner's office to create aggregate value through optimal revenue generation and profits -- for itself and its member franchises -- there is no need for any heads to hang.

This is a tale of two countries. What in this case is bad for hockey in the U.S. is good for the game in Canada and not necessarily bad for the NHL.

The bottom line is that another series for the Montreal Canadiens will be good for the NHL and its partners; most notably its Canadian broadcast and corporate partners. At the micro level, it will sell more tickets and pump up higher box office totals (especially with at least two games at the 21,273-seat Bell Centre, the second-biggest building in the league with the highest-priced tickets of any of the remaining eight playoff clubs).

It will engage more fans and drive larger overall television audiences, largely because CBC and RDS will drive numbers north of 3.5 M and even 4 M per game in Canada alone. Those ratings will help make more money for the NHL's single-largest broadcast rights buyer; the CBC.

It's true that fewer Americans will be watching the conference semifinals and finals than if Ovechkin and the Caps were on the marquee. The net outcome with the Habs in and the Caps out is positive for the core business of the NHL, however, because so many more people will be watching in Canada.

The NHL might not see it that way, because it is rarely prone to recognizing that on a per capita basis, 10 to 20 times more Canadians watch NHL hockey than do their American counterparts. What it should see is that when your business partners make money, it's good for your business. And in this case, no one pays the NHL more money for rights than the CBC and its Hockey Night in Canada franchise.

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Doughty and the Kings have a bright future

After pushing the favoured Vancouver Canucks to overtime twice and splitting the opening set at General Motors Place enroute to a 2-1 series lead, the Los Angeles Kings suffered three straight losses and are on the outside looking in this week while the Canucks prepare for the Chicago Blackhawks and Round 2 of the NHL's 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs.

That does not mean, however, that the Kings have little to celebrate going into the off-season. They in fact have every reason to be bullish about the next cycle of their franchise history in La-La Land.

Reaching the playoffs for the first time in eight years is a big step in the right direction. It also gives their young line-up a taste of what the Stanley Cup tournament is all about. As star defenceman Drew Doughty said after elimination Sunday, you sometimes have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win.

Doughty himself is another reason to celebrate if you're a Kings' fan, a member of LA's hockey operations brass or an NHL league marketing executive coveting a presence in the second-largest media market in the United States. In #8 Doughty, the Kings have a gold-medal winning Olympian, a James Norris nominee as the league's best defenceman and a player who invokes comparisons with none other than #4 Bobby Orr...all at the age of 20!

The remarkably composed sophomore rearguard is the epitome of a young, up-and-coming Kings team that appears ready to contend for much of the new decade ahead. At an average age of 27.4, LA's future lies in Doughty, goaltender Jonathan Quick, rising star Anze Kopitar, Russian sniper Alexander Frolov, captain Dustin Brown and other youngsters in the line-up. Los Angeles also has to be considered a possible destination for free agent sniper Ilya Kovalchuk.

The bottom line is the new-look Kings are beginning to make strides in both hockey operations and business operations. Their attendance climbed five per cent and reached 96% capacity (averaging 17,313) at the Staples Center they share with the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA. Their television audiences on Fox Sportsnet West and Prime Ticket are up 27% (although keep in mind, the Kings' average regional audience of 27,140 households and approximately 62,000 viewers is 15 per cent the size of Canucks' TV numbers on Rogers Sportsnet Pacific).

On the NHL Composite Power Rankings for the 2009-'10 regular season released this month by TheSportMarket.biz, the Kings placed 12th overall (ninth on the ice with 105 points and 15th off the ice with an estimated per game box office of $817 K US). http://www.facebook.com/thesportmarket?v=photos&ref=ts#!/photo.php?pid=3724749&id=280702824731
 
Much of their strength in overall operations comes from the solid business infrastructure provided by owners Anschutz Entertainment Group and the connection to their glory years provided by former stars such as Luc Robitaille, who now serves as the Kings' President of Business Operations.

For the LA Kings, the present is good; the future better. On and off the ice, they have such bright days ahead, Kings' branded sunglasses could become compulsory equipment in Hollywood for the first time since Wayne Gretzky made hockey fashionable in southern California 20 years ago.

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History Will Be Made promotional campaign is a winner for the NHL (and Young & Rubicam)

In this era of social media, you know you're onto something when people can't help but want to share digital files...story links...audio files...video files. You name it; if people want to share it, you've struck a chord.

That's the case with the National Hockey League's promotional campaign for the 2010 Stanley Cup championships; the History Will Be Made broadcast and in-arena video series.

Commissioned by the NHL's marketing department and developed by the global advertising agency Young & Rubicam, History Will Be Made is a winner.

When the series was unveiled last month, the NHL announced it would include six iconic moments in Stanley Cup playoff history.

“These are the moments from our game that have gone down in history as some of the most iconic in sports,” NHL Executive Vice-President of Marketing Brian Jennings said March 19th. "It’s that image of a flying Bobby Orr frozen in mid-air, when Bourque's 22-year journey finally ends with a championship, when Messier went from being a captain to 'The Captain.' The Stanley Cup Playoffs are where history is made, and this year will be no different.”

At the time, the NHL had plans for three other 30-second videos: one featuring former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy in his Calder Trophy-winning rookie campaign in 1986; one starring Stevie Yzerman scoring his double-overtime winner in the 1996 western conference final against St. Louis; and another putting the spotlight on Mario Lemieux in 1991.

This week, however, the NHL rolled out a seventh 30-second spot in the History Will Be Made campaign running across the league's national and local broadcast partners, NHL Network, NHL.com, in-arena, franchise web sites and various affiliated digital and social media websites. It featured 1984 vintage Wayne Gretzky, scoring a Stanley Cup final game winner for the Edmonton Oilers against the New York Islanders.

Gretzky actually had a cameo role in a Blues' uniform in one of the original six spots; watching helplessly as Yzerman raced away over the blueline before slapping his memorable winner. But no such vintage series is complete without Gretzky alongside Lemieux and Messier. Oversight or not, the NHL deserves credit for getting it right...better late than never.

More important, the NHL deserves credit for the campaign, period. It deserves kudos for the simplicity of the creative. Simple concept. Standard musical theme. A consistent three-part close, with 1. The specific storyline; 2. The campaign title; and 3. The NHL 2010 Stanley Cup logo.

It's what makes it work so well. It's what has allowed franchises such as the Vancouver Canucks to customize History Will Be Made videos starring Henrik and Daniel Sedin (two official versions so far, entitled "What if they hadn't called this "home"?).

Most importantly, it's what has created a buzz among the digital set, spawning more than 300 parodies in a little over three weeks. That means the campaign has captured the imagination of the young, interactive web set. And that's good news for the NHL and for Young & Rubicam.

The original six network-wide History Will Be Made videos, along with the seventh national spot featuring Gretzky, are listed below.

1970 - Boston Bruins: What if Bobby didn’t fly?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUnS5gq0BZ4&feature=channel

1984 - Edmonton Oilers: What if there was no Greatness? *
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMVgbHa0Fd0

1986 - Montreal Canadiens: What if Roy played like a rookie?
http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=65895

1991 - Pittsburgh Penguins: What if Mario wasn’t so super?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxoxGXyolVM&NR=1

1994 - New York Rangers: What if Messier didn’t lift an entire city?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljv6f00E2nc&NR=1

1996 - Detroit Red Wings: What if Stevie Y didn’t inspire Hockeytown?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qc7fBl7vO0&NR=1

2001 - Colorado Avalanche: What if Bourque didn’t believe in one more year?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntccXmKmAxE&feature=related


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Early ouster by NHL Devils shows again that late-season hired guns rarely pay off

Lou Lamoriello is a smart hockey man whose career track record of Stanley Cup championships in 1995, 2000 and 2003 speaks for itself.

Yet on the night Lamoriello's New Jersey Devils suffered a disappointing 4-1 eastern conference quarter-final loss at the hands of the underdog Philadelphia Flyers, it has to be said his penchant for late-season shake-ups has failed to pay off once again.

This time, landing prized unrestricted free agent Ilya Kovalchuk from the Atlanta Thrashers did not give the Devils the extra bump Lamoriello was looking for in the NHL's 2010 Stanley Cup tournament, where New Jersey was among the favourites going in.

It's true the Devils' CEO, president and general manager has been more predisposed to coaching changes than big trade deadline deals. Three years ago, Lamoriello fired his head coach Claude Julien with just three games left in the 2006-'07 regular season, despite having the Devils in second place in the eastern conference. Lamoriello was hoping to repeat the magic of 2000, when he dismissed Robbie Ftorek with eight games left, took over behind the bench and led New Jersey to its second Stanley Cup.

The difference between late-season coaching changes and late-season player rentals, however, is the cost. Firings cost what's remaining on the employment contract (and some goodwill). Incoming player rentals, on the other hand, don't come without tangible player assets and/or draft picks going the other way.

In this case, Lamoriello pulled the trigger just before the NHL's 2010 trade deadline, acquiring Kovalchuk in exchange for Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors, prospect Patrice Cormier and -- here's the biggie -- New Jersey's 2010 first-round draft pick. That is potentially a very big price to pay for 20 games in the Meadowlands.

It's not that Kovalchuk failed to produce offence for the second-seeded Devils against the seventh-seeded Flyers; he did, with six points in five games. The question is did he make the Devils a better team than they already were? After years of being conditioned to do so in Atlanta, did Kovalchuk try to do too much himself? Most important, what did he do to the chemistry of New Jersey in a heavily-structured, team-oriented culture?

Those are the smaller questions now. The bigger question for the balance of the post-season will be where Kovalchuk plays next season. Will Lamoriello and the Devils have anything to show for the high first-rounder they gave up to get the Russian star? Or will he choose to sign with the Los Angeles Kings or another more offensive-oriented, free-wheeling team?

The big sport business question is, however, whether such late-season deals make sense in the salary cap era of the NHL, where building through the draft and player development seems to be the right formula.

Sure, you get the odd year like 2008 where a hired gun like Marian Hossa will get the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Stanley Cup final (and then leave) or a Brad Richards will drive the Dallas Stars to the western conference finals (and stay for the longer term).

The odds are that Kovalchuk will be like most late-season player rentals in the NHL (or any sport for that matter). Just ask his trading partner on the Kovalchuk deal, Atlanta GM Don Waddell, who in 2007 sent four draft picks to St. Louis to get Keith Tkachuk (for a few weeks) and Braydon Coburn to Philadelphia for Alexei Zhitnik. Or Calgary Flames' general manager Daryl Sutter, who sent two players and his first round draft pick last year to get Olli Jokinen.

Late-season shake-ups of coaches and players are high risk. The Kovalchuk case is yet another example of one that is also low reward.

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Salary cap helps raise the roof on NHL attendance

Attendance in the National Hockey League has grown each year since the lockout of 2004-'05, reaching an all-time high of a league-wide per game average of 16,458 in the 2009-'10 regular season which ended last Sunday.

Many would point to raucous big buildings such as the United Center in Chicago (21,356) and the Bell Centre in Montreal (21,273) as driving the league-wide average and they'd be at least partially right. Some would suggest new rules and an emerging crop of young superstars a la Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have peaked fan interest and they'd also be right. Still others would point to shootouts and three-point games and how they pump up team point totals and compress the point differentials between contenders and pretenders.

Yet if the numbers have grown consistently since the lockout, isn't it also true that parity -- pure and simple --has gone a long way to keeping the turnstiles moving? What better way to sell tickets and drive attendance than on the promise of hope: with no clear Stanley Cup favourite, more fans from more markets can dream longer about their own team's prospects of making the grade.

The numbers would suggest the bull market for NHL tickets is the result of the perfect storm of all of these factors, but none more important than team balance.

Check this out: almost half of the 30 teams in the NHL (13) are drawing more than 18,000 fans per game...more than a third (11) of the league's teams are selling out every game...five of Canada’s six franchises are at 100 per cent capacity and the sixth is not far off at 98.8 per cent...six northern U.S. markets are playing to full houses.

Most impressive is that four-fifths of the NHL is north of the magic number most people in the business covet as a sign of franchise strength; with 24 of 30 teams at or above 80% arena capacity.

Despite the bull market for NHL tickets north of the border and in northern U.S. markets, the league clearly still has its work cut out for it in the southern U.S, where seven of its eight lowest-drawing teams are currently located...five of them in sun belt markets.

That includes Phoenix. Despite a fourth-place finish in the NHL's overall standings last week, the Coyotes closed the regular season dead last in attendance, averaging a reported 11,989 at Jobing.com Arena.

Yet Phoenix and the NHL's other weak links would be even weaker were it not for the elephant in the room; a salary cap implemented in 2005 and one which has to be given at least some props for helping drive these record levels of game attendance and fan interest.

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Building brand equity for the NHL -- and stars such as the Sedins -- through a more balanced schedule

The one-two punch that is the Sedin twins is one of the greatest assets of the Vancouver Canucks Hockey Club as they prepare for the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs and market for the future.

If it's true they've been undervalued in their own backyard of Vancouver until very recently, it's also true they've been even less appreciated elsewhere in the NHL, with 17 franchises in the eastern time zone and a heavily-unbalanced regular season schedule.

And that's largely because you can't fully understand what you never -- or rarely -- see.

It explains in part why even seasoned hockey media types from throughout the NHL and its 26 designated television markets (DMAs) don't seem to have cracked the code on just how terrific they are. The league is already the only one among the five big leagues in North America that is so largely skewed towards New York and Toronto with a majority of its teams in the Eastern Time Zone.

The geographic concentration of the NHL and its superstars is exacerbated by its schedule, one which does not allow for fans of each club to see the other 29 teams at least once. Seventy-eight per cent of regular season play is intra-conference and almost 30 per cent intra-divisional.

When I first raised the issue in the editorial pages of The Vancouver Sun and Sports Business Journal in the fall of 2006, the situation was even worse, with 87% of each team's 82-game regular season being played within its own conference and a whopping 39% within the division. That travel-saving, cost-reducing, highly-unbalanced format -- supposedly designed to promote regional rivalries -- was what the NHL took out of the lockout to say "Thank You Fans".

http://www.thesportmarket.biz/columns/2006/nov1306.htm

What it did was prevent fans in Vancouver from seeing emerging superstars such as Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals at least once each season. Instead, divisonal rotations meant we'd see #87 and #8 once every three years.

The NHL did slightly tweak its schedule three seasons ago, deploying a wildcard tool that at least allowed the Canucks to play host to Canada's three eastern teams -- the Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs -- once each year.

Yet we still need to wait three years between visits from the marquee player brands and marquee team brands of the eastern conference. It's just not good enough for a league that is still a gate-driven business and relies on its season ticket holders for the vast majority of its revenues.

The flip side of this is that the Sedins and other top talents from the western conference are largely "site unseen" in the majority of eastern markets each year. The media and hence the fans rarely have the chance to see them play.

It's only part of the story, but the sooner the NHL's unbalanced schedule is replaced by a more balanced schedule -- i.e. like that of the NBA, which also has 30 teams and plays an 82-game regular season but limits intra-conference play to 63% -- the better. Annual visits (and the resultant television exposure, media coverage and fan impressions) will help build the personal brands of individual players like the Sedins, the team brands of all the teams in the league and, ultimately by extension, the brand of the NHL.

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Appreciation of Sedins must begin at home

With 112 points, Henrik Sedin is the National Hockey League's newest scoring champion. He is the first Vancouver Canuck player to win the points race and one of only three players to come close (along with former team captain and fellow Swede Markus Naslund and the Russian Rocket Pavel Bure). He now holds the Canucks' single-season mark for points, breaking Bure's record of 110.

One thing Henrik does not yet have is the recognition factor a consistent point-a-game player would typically have in the NHL (especially after this year upping the ante to almost 1.5 points per game). Many would say he doesn't have the respect he deserves for a player of his talent and, more important, track record. Some would suggest he's the victim of an eastern bias that permeates through the NHL, propogated by the eastern media.

In my view, it's more a case of the television exposure, media and promotional weighting that comes from simply having most of the NHL's teams playing in the eastern time zone.

It is true that the NHL is the only league with a majority of its franchises based in one time zone; the eastern time zone. The breakdown in the NHL is 17 in the eastern time zone, five in central time, four in mountain time and four in pacific.

The NHL is not, however, the only league to be subject to such a so-called bias that comes from having so much action take place in the eastern time zone.
 
The NFL has 50% of its teams in ET (16); with 10 in CT, two in MT and four in PT. Major League Baseball has 14 in the eastern time zone and 16 in the other three (eight, two and six, respectively) while the NBA is the least "eastern" of the four major North American loops: 12 in ET, 10 in CT, three in MT and five in PT.

Complaining about such geographic skews is one of the oldest pastimes in North America, on both sides of the border, but especially in Canada.

Yet those of us who have been closest to the careers of Henrik -- and his equally-gifted twin brother Daniel -- should consider how long it has taken for the Sedins to be accepted as the remarkable talents they are even here in Vancouver. That goes not only for west coast hockey fans, but for the media who cover the Canucks game-in, game-out.

Appreciation for Henrik and Daniel -- now in their ninth season playing with the Canucks -- must start in Vancouver before it's possible in other NHL centres and media markets.

If this season has been a threshold campaign for the Sedins on the ice, it has also marked a breakthrough in the way the local media has embraced them.  It's taken some time here in Vancouver for the twins to get the credit they're due. When Henrik skated off with this year's Cyclone Taylor Award as the Canucks MVP, it marked the first such honour either twin has received in Vancouver.

It might take some more time before that kind of recognition happens continentally, or even nationally.

The Art Ross Trophy is a big first step. A Hart Trophy nomination as league MVP should follow and would be another good step. A Hart win would of course be big in building the Sedin brand. But respect, like so many other things in life, must begin at home.

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