Rumors of My Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
Media wags and tony upper-crust metropolitan publications have branded hockey dead. In an exclusive interview, Hockey has a few choice words to share about the future.

OPINION/FICTION

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor

02.10.04 - We caught up with Hockey in the locker room at the end of his last game of the day in Long Beach, California. He was changing into a nicely pressed Brooks Brothers suit. His tousled hair covered a few scars, and a fresh butterfly closure over one of tonight's many injuries.

Hockey's eyes burned with the passion of a competitor, his hands clenched together tightly as we spoke about some of the tough things that the media has had to say to him recently.

MLN: Tony Kornheiser told his radio audience that you were "dead" this morning.

Hockey: Hey, his show's been cancelled, not mine. What's that show he's got on TV... Pardon The Irrelevance? Seriously, I'm bigger now than I've ever been.

MLN: How can you say that? The NHL is about to shut its doors for a year or more to bring salaries down just to keep the weaker teams open.

Hockey: Yeah. The old sports brain trust rant about us staying where we only belong in the Northeast and Canada, eh? I like that one. The only problem is that those guys don't have clue one about me.

The NHL draws good numbers. They just keep trying to pay some of my boys like they draw in more than they do. You can't put on airs about who you are and keep things running. We do just fine in places like Dallas and Phoenix and Colorado. We got aging teams in cities on the slide like Buffalo. I know my guys would like to think they rank up there with wide receivers and long ball hitters on the pay scale. If we ever get to be about TV, maybe they should be ranking that kind of green. Of course my owners aren't wearing any halos either. You keep signing those contracts that are bad business decisions, you hurt my prime ice, which I don't appreciate.

But you guys always forget: I'm not just the NHL. In the last decade I've spread out on ice all over the Midwest and the Southwest. Thousands of fans watch me nightly simultaneously in dozens of cities from Cape Fear to Corpus Christi.

Sure, the NHL is the big show, but I'm doing games at the AHL, CHL, ECHL, UHL, WHA-2, SEHL, and even the Juniors in the NMHA. Suburban and regional pro hockey are the fastest-growing sections of professional sports. The minor leagues bring me a few million fans.

Even if the NHL goes dark for a time, there's some ambitious types who want to revive the the old WHA! A little kick 'em while they're down opportunism, eh? Right up my alley.

Tons of people watch me.

MLN: Does it hurt you that you don't play well to television?

Hockey: Hey, not everyone has a pretty face...'cept Gretz... That's why people remember him. Great player, but he's a good lookin' fellah, not that I notice or anything, he's a good talker, and a pretty snappy dresser. He took to the kind of marketing that players in other sports can do.

Most of my guys don't have the mugs that sell stuff. Some don't speak such good English. We need to do more about getting our guys in front of cameras off the ice, 'cause we don't play for television when we hit the ice.

MLN: Why is it that hockey and television don't do well together?

Hockey: (Laughs) I'm like revenge... A dish best served cold, up close, and in person. Other sports have been built for television. I'm too fast for their cameras to keep up with me. Too much happens in too many corners of my ice. Fox tried that streaking puck. Cute, but it ain't hockey.

MLN: The major league press says that no one shows up to watch hockey...

Hockey: I fill up a few big barns. More fans see me up close and personal though in dozens of small bergs where SportsCenter won't be doing any highlights unless Tonya Harding or Manute Bol show up. Though I'm sure if they did, the Rockford IceHogs would be thrilled off their butts.

I'm the number two minor league sport behind baseball. Between that and the NHL numbers, we seat a lot of fans.

I'm not about TV though. You want to see me, you've got to come out, unless someone figures out a way to get you into it the way you do when you're there in person.

MLN: Ask the average Joe on the street, and Gretzky is the last hockey player they can remember.

Hockey: Joe must not be a hockey fan. Hockey fans know hockey players. They know what interests them, and they don't need a talking Head to tell them what to think about their sport. I think that's what pisses off the ones that give a rat's ass about me.

The rest of them can friggin' go screw themselves. Kornheiser knows jack about me or my crew. That's why he can't talk us up. Probably has trouble with four-syllable names. Sometimes I wish they'd tell the truth to their listeners and viewers. 'The reason I don't talk up hockey is I don't know jack about it and really I don't care.'

You gotta remember too how the Head game is played. When Fox had my major league contract, the other TV and radio guys were gloves-off to cheap-shot us from behind.

MLN: Why do you think that is?

Hockey: We don't help ourselves much, I'll tell you. The guys who run my ice have done a rotten job of getting the word out about my boys. Bettman is an imported hoops man. He doesn't know how to talk to the Heads. He knows our fans get it. He can't seem to get the Heads to get it, or figure out how to bring people to my ice to turn them on to what I'm all about.

Beyond that, there's the exploding Head thing.

MLN: The exploding what???

Hockey: Talking Heads have a lot on their plate. Pro football, college football, pro hoops, college hoops, pro baseball, golf, tennis. There's just so much room in those noggins for factoids on players, games, leagues, rivalries... about all of it. Give 'em a guy with a French Canadian name and it puts them in paralysis. Truth.

Guys with good nicknames. "The Great One" That had real class. And controversies. My boys may throw down gloves on the ice, but they behave pretty good off of it. If some of 'em got caught in hotel rooms doin' stuff or on a weapons charge, maybe we'd get the kind of attention that some of those guys in the NBA do. But who wants that kind of attention?

MLN:You've always been the number four sport behind Football, baseball, and basketball. NASCAR draws bigger.

Hockey: There's this idea with you guys in the media that everything has to be the NFL or baseball to get some respect. We're not wired the same way. That doesn't make me any less cool, though.

I put some of the best athletes in the world on my ice. Those that want to see me pay to see me.

Could we put more butts in seats? Probably. We're a lot like baseball in the "core" fan days. We have to figure out ways to bring in what hockey folks would call "fair weather fans" who come for the hype.

MLN: What do you do after the lights go out at the arenas?

Hockey: When I go home I light up my PlayStation and pull out my sixie of Molson and I'm a happy camper.

MLN: You're a blue collar sport. Is that a liability in 21st century sports?

Hockey: Football is blue collar watered down in a bunch of hype and crap. I turn on the Superbowl I want to see some good play and some good hard contact, not some aging pansies lip-synching ancient tunes for four hours of pre-game.

MLN: What did you think about Janet Jackson?

Hockey: (Smiles) I thought she should have pulled that stunt during the Stanley Cup. It's colder where we play. The stunt would have worked better. (Laughs)

MLN: Do you think the fighting keeps people away?

Hockey: It keeps away some. It brings in others. I'm a physical sport. People play hard. Tempers get a little hot. It is part of me though. When it happens, we deal with it. It's over and everyone moves on.

MLN: The New Yorker had a piece in it that said that you can't even get a date...

Hockey: Yeah? [Expletive] them. Like some pansy-ass rag written for people who hold their little pinkies out for tea knows jack about me. I have more groupies than Mick Jagger and 50 Cent combined.

MLN: What would you like people to know about you most?

Hockey: I want them to know about my excitement. I provide you more action per minute than any of my buddies, football included. Yeah, I have a few rules that may seem a bit strange at first, but once you get it, you're hooked.

I also want you to know that if you think for yourself, and you don't care what the talking Heads say about stuff, then I'm for you. I'm going to have some down times, sure, and some up times, but I'm still the best game in town.

MLN: Hockey, thank you for your time.

Hockey: Always a pleasure.