The problem is that you have no growth in that area. Large market snowbelt cities in the US and Canada:

Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. Vancouver, Quebec City, Hamilton, and Mississauga are marginal.
NYC, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Washington DC, Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Denver, Pittsburgh, Baltimore (close to Wash DC), Indianapolis, Hartford (close to NYC), Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Columbus. Grand Rapids (Michigan), Harrisburg (PA), Buffalo, and Providence (RI) are marginal.

Two current teams are in marginal locations size wise; of the listed big markets only Winnipeg, Seattle, Cleveland, Baltimore, Indy, Hartford, Milwaukee, and Cinti are without NHL teams. Cleveland, Hartford, Indy, Milwaukee, and Cinti all have AHL franchises. Really, that leaves Seattle and Winnipeg as viable snowbelt markets.

One thing that the NHL could do a lot better is improve the ties to minor league hockey. Most teams have AHL team ties, but why not work out deals with teams further down the ladder - ECHL, UHL, CHL, etc? A kid sees a player playing for an AHL team, and a few years later he's in the NHL, the kid will follow that team. Granted, not many guys playing in the UHL or CHL ever make it all the way up. My point I guess is that grass roots support doesn't have to require kids playing the game; watching it at lower levels (which typically include lower prices and more access to players) can have the same effect.

 

I don't think there's much or anything I'd disagree with in the post before (3 posts ago?) this last one. I'm not sure there's a conclusion. It may be that the growth of hockey is dependant on changing the rules or allowing violence.

You also mention the high cost of hockey... I'm very familiar with this problem. My kids didn't play hockey... why? They never asked. I wasn't about to sign them up to a game that it would cost me hundreds to play and they wouldn't like it (very bad track record with my kids in organized sports).

So where do we go from here? Every read "Good to Great"? All the buzz... trendy bus book, so yeah I read it. It isn't bad.

One of the things it talks about is finding your strong point and work on that. Don't try to be (try to make your business) something that you're (its) not.

Hockey has a fringe market. Always will. Look at Curling or Euchre or field hockey or wrestling. Activities/Sports with areas of HUGE following and areas of no following (or even knowledge).

I'm good with hockey like that. Many people are. The NHL should cater to the people who have supported the game and made them a lot of money... not the people they'd like to watch hockey (friggin' Peter Puck). Support your current customer base before you go off looking for new customers. It's a basic business premise that Gary's forgotten.

 

Curling is cool! Watching a well shot stone with just enough curl to weave through the guards and come to rest on the button after a light tap is amazing. Of course I got hustled by two old ladies in the UP on the shuffleboard table in a bar, but watching them play me was great. But curling is a game with its roots in the outdoors again, on homemade rinks. You have to be able to do something outdoors up here in the winter, we used to have broomball tournaments between towns, another ice rink sport. It's cold out, it's dark more than it's light and we can only have sex for so many hours a day.

 

Things are no doubt isolated on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. . . have you looked out the window lately?

 

Yeah I know but we are talking about winter sports and I used to live a lot further north.

 

Hockey can and will grow, though very slowly, if and when the NHL gets their act together.

I think you can put people into 4 basic groups: Devout hockey fans, casual/regional (i.e. their home town team) fans, uninterested/unaware sports fans, and people who don't like hockey and/or won't give it a chance based on past perceptions. Just a guess, I'd say that, combining the US and Canada, you have about 5%, 15%, 30%, and 50% respectively. The 5% are going to go to games, even if they've sworn them off because of the CBA/lockout. The key is to get more of the 15% of casual fans to go to more games, and to get some of the 30% to be interested enough to maybe go to a few games.

I don't see either of those things happen if you keep the game "pure". There has to be some concessions on the part of history to get scoring high enough to interest more fans. Sydney Crosby could become a new face of the NHL; but if he never scores more than 50-50-100, will anyone care? If he could score 75-100-175, don't you think a few more of those people who are bored to death in January might tune in? A run at Gretzky's magical 92-120-212 season would certainly pull people in, and especially if some of the other great talents of the league - St Louis, Nash, etc - were right behind him.

Now, I'm not saying we should make the pucks different (*cough*MLB*cough*) to inflate scoring or get silly with rules changes (*cough*NFL*cough*); just that the games needs some tweaks so it doesn't have to rely solely on the devout fans who enjoy 1-0 games. The economics of the NHL do not work without reaching into the larger fan base, and staying in the snow belt will not support more than 20-24 teams (which actually may be a positive, but good luck finding 6-10 franchises to fold).

 

Where in the UP did you live?

 

Blues for sale:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=2088049

 

NOT THAT FAR!

 

Troll!