The NHL Needs a Border War

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Hockey always seems like its second fiddle to the other major sports.  Maybe it’s even third fiddle these days.  It just seems like whatever the NHL tries to do it never pans out for them.

They've had their problems; lockouts, gambling, Fox's puck highlighter.  For some reason or another they just couldn't get back over the hump into mainstream America's living room.  Some of the decisions they made after their year long hiatus didn't help their cause.  Signing up to be broadcast on the Outdoor Life Network (currently Versus) just didn't seem like the way to grab the much needed attention that they needed.

There are some positives.  Superstars have emerged that almost all American's know.  Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Evgani Malkin, and many others are now normal names that even very casual viewers of hockey recognize.  The Stanley Cup Finals were fabulous last year. A seven game series with a rematch of the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins definitely doesn't hurt the NHL's cause either.

The pinnacle for the sport was last Sunday night's game between Team Canada and Team USA.  The excitement, the emotion, the hatred for one another topped any other hockey game in a long, long time.  American's who haven't watched a hockey game in years tuned in.  Canadians who live and breathe the sport were ecstatic for the game until the conclusion of it.  It was the essence of what sports should be about.  That game and hopefully the games to come until this Sunday may help put hockey back on the American map.  The NHL needs to parlay the American victory into an NHL victory though.

The NHL needs to get rid of the West and East and start a North and South conference.  The North are Canadian teams and the South are American teams.  Make it a 28 team league with fourteen teams in each country.  We would have to get rid of some teams in the US, but that wouldn't be that big of a deal.  Do we really need the Columbus Blue Jackets and Phoenix Coyotes?  Americans could still play on the Canadian teams and Canadians on the US teams.

This would work out because what we learned from last Sunday's game was that it was about the name on the front of the jersey and not the name on the back.  Fans don't care who are playing, they care about their team and that they win.  All skaters could've been wearing full on green man suits with no names on their jerseys and we wouldn't care, as long as our team won.  This would be the same with the new NHL.  Canadians would love their conference and Americans would love theirs.  There hasn't been any other sport that has created a hated rival amongst conferences.  Baseball used to be close before interleague play was introduced.  Now when interleague play is going on we just care to see the other teams' players, not care about the American/National league rivalry.

The NHL would be different.  Every international game would be of importance to our country.  No one in American wants their team to lose to a Canadian team and vice-versa.  The All Star game would be fabulous and the Stanley Cup Playoffs would be unlike any other.  It would capture the atmosphere of an Olympic hockey gold medal game, except we would have a 7 game series to decide the champion.

It's an idea that is feasible and would work.  It would expand the audience of hockey to so many people and it would turn the sport around and catapult it past to where it once was.

For once the NHL wouldn't have to play second fiddle and could finally be an innovator instead of a follower.