Saving The NHL

With not a whole lot going on in hockey right now, I figured I'd recycle something that I wrote a few years ago.  So here is my plan to save the NHL--slightly revised since it was originally written and very, very much tongue-in-cheek.

Saving the NHL can be done very simply and it would take only a few years to get things back on track.  (I'm thinking ten years, tops, but it could happen much, much sooner.)  The first thing that has to be done is to get Oprah interested in the game. She can then declare to the world how wonderful hockey is. (I can see this happening now that the Hawks won the Cup.)  This will get every suburban soccer-mom on board and hockey will become the fastest growing sport in North America. Within two years, teams will be looking to build new arenas just so they can fit all of the new fans. Of course, she will have to have Bettman as a guest on her show.  {shudder}  (Oprah and Bettman together on TV--the stuff nightmares are made of.)

The year after the new arenas are built, Oprah--that champion of all downtrodden African-Americans--will have a change of heart. She will declare hockey to be a racist sport because of the relative lack of African-American players in the NHL. This will cause the suburban soccer-moms to rethink their love of the sport--after all, if Oprah thinks it’s bad, it must be--and abandon it. Their husbands and children will no longer be allowed to have anything to do with hockey--my gosh! Oprah said it’s bad (remember how she affected the sales of beef!)--and the arenas will become empty. Teams will go bankrupt and shut their doors.  And Bettman would be ousted--preferably, driven out of town after being tarred and feathered.

The only people left watching hockey will be TRUE hockey fanatics! The original six teams--Canadiens, Maple Leafs, Red Wings, Bruins, Rangers, and Black Hawks--will be stronger than ever and the cities that have the second six teams to come into the league (or wherever they moved to) will re-embrace the game.  At most, teams in 20 cities will be able to keep it together and survive. No one will have to explain the game--as NBC does--and no one will have to defend checking, hard hitting, or fighting anymore. All will be right with the world once again.  And all non-bandwagon fans will rejoice!

Nice, simple, doable.  What more can you want?  I do realize this can't happen, of course--Oprah announced the end of her show, so we just don't have the time span needed for this to take place.  But it  is a nice thought.  How great would it be to only have 20 teams, again?  And in places where people actually understand and love hockey!  Ah, dreams...