NHL's Last Regular Season Day Tells Truth About Its Status on U.S. TV

In a year when the NHL was told that over one third of its revenue comes from Canada, the last day of the regular season told the story of the league in the United States.

NBC, which holds the rights to broadcast the league nationally, chose to broadcast a meaningless game from noon to three o'clock featuring two teams that had already clinched their playoff positions, Washington and Boston.

Aside from Alexander Ovechkin trying to win the Maurice Richard Trophy, the game meant nothing.

Meanwhile there were four games, Los Angeles-Colorado, Detroit-Chicago, Buffalo-New Jersey, and most significantly, New York Rangers-Philadelphia, that had playoff implications.

The Ranger-Flyer game was a winner-take-all situation, in which the winner became the last playoff team and the loser went home.

It was played with exciting Stanley Cup playoff intensity, and was won by Philadelphia in a shoot-out 2-1.

But instead of the NHL showcasing this game on national American television, they were forced to air it on the limited NHL network.

This is typical of the disrespect and low status hockey has in the United States.

Ratings are so low that the NHL got dropped by ESPN and were picked up by Versus which is not available in a large number of American markets.  And every American network has told the NHL it will not broadcast any games involving Canadian teams unless they have to in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

This would not happen to professional football, baseball, basketball, and other significant events like NCAA basketball, football, and Wimbledon tennis.

I can't count how many times I've read complaints from American hockey fans on B/R about shoddy American television hockey coverage.

The fact that the NHL can't get national American television coverage for the most significant game of the regular season, for two of its largest American markets, says it all.

So, what was so important that NBC couldn't pick one of the later, more significant games to be its season-ending finale?

When I turned on Buffalo's local NBC station after 3 PM, the network featured live television shopping. A woman was telling everyone how much relief she got from a drug she bought.

Yes, that was more significant than a life-or-death hockey game.

The NHL has been trying to make hockey a "big four" sport in the United States since the first expansion back in 1967.

Forty-three years later it is still no closer to its goal.

Gary Bettman was hired to change the status of hockey in the United States.

To that end, he tailored NHL policy for the last two decades.

His plan was to expand the league into unfamiliar markets, in hopes that American television ratings would improve and finally land the NHL a rich American television deal.

So, cities like Miami, Nashville, Atlanta, and Columbus were added. Canadian cities and North American cities where there was a traditional hockey environment like Seattle, Milwaukee and Portland were ignored.

Bettman also stripped the three smallest Canadian and American cities of their teams, and sent them southward.

In 2009, ten American cities lost money.

In 2010, only Tampa Bay, which has finally solved its ownership problem, looks like it might turn the corner. The rest remain in the sorry state they were a year ago.

In many cities, the attendance is fudged or propped up by discount deals and other gimmicks.

So Bettman has made a bit of a retreat.

He made a grand tour of the cities, whose franchises he removed, and told them they could get back in the NHL if they met certain conditions.

He refused to extend the same courtesy to Hamilton, Ontario, which can easily meet all his terms, because he wants to preserve the southern Ontario market as a monopoly for Buffalo and Toronto.

It has been reported, that Bettman has told the NHL owners, that based on the success of the American team in the recent Olympics, he can negotiate an American television deal that would be almost double what the NHL is currently getting in 2011.

But Olympic hockey television success may not be the same as NHL television success, and judging by way the NHL was treated by American television on its last regular season day, the chances of getting a much better contract are the same as watching the Philadelphia-New York game: small.