howeaboutthat

Does Niemi know the Heimlich maneuver?

But its not just about TV ratings in NA. The NHL has quite a large following across the globe, especially in Europe, and if Bettman wants to give the league even more exposure then he needs to allow its best players to compete in the Olympics. The BBC coverage of the Olympic ice hockey was fantastic this year, decent commentators were employed rather than the "its a minority sport, get someone cheap and clueless" as has happened before with the BBC and it was well reported in the press. One thing very evident during the games though was the regular referring to the NHL team various players played for and their accomplishments in the NHL as well as wider hockey tournaments. This kind of exposure on the UKs national, ad-free, media broadcaster is superb. Within the UK ice hockey coverage is generally restricted to ESPN subscribers for NHL or Sky TV for our own domestic hockey league (the EIHL). The acid test though was the amount of people who I work with who, knowing that I'm a hockey nut, commented on how much they enjoyed watching the Olympic hockey and although they'd never thought of watching it before were getting a subscription to ESPN so that they could continue to watch the some of the best players in the world in the best league.

Over here in the UK it has to be, without a doubt, the oh-so-plastic Penguin's 'fans'. Hockey isn't very widely followed in the UK but they do have a few teams with long (but occassionally rocky) histories to be proud of, yet when I go to Nottingham Panthers home games (the largest followed team in the UK) you'll often see Nottingham-born and bred folk wearing jerseys featuring the world's most whiney hockey player's name on the back rather than jerseys for the team they are apparently following. When I (a Detroit-born, but British passport holding Wings fan) ask them why they are Pens fans its either like asking a Londoner why they support Manchester United soccer team (usually involving an uncle twice removed who either supports them and brought them a shirt or some other tedious link) or they say something like "I like the colour of their jersey", but never (although its pretty obvious its the real reason) "they've won stuff recently". When you point out the reason they've been successful recently (ie: they were so poor for so long that they scooped the top draft picks and built a team around them) the realisation that they don't fully understand how the NHL works dawns on them and they'll undoubtably reply with "you'd not complain if Crosby/Malikn/Fleury was a Wing", a bone response if ever there was one. Grrrr.