2010 Stanley Cup Finals: Further Evidence of Gary Bettman's Mistakes

On Friday afternoon, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that the league would host it's annual Winter Classic on New Year's Day 2011 in Pittsburgh, PA, and would feature the host Penguins and Washington Capitals.

Bettman also indicated that the Capitals would host a game in the next 2-3 years as well.

I immediately called foul, pointing out that this will be the second appearance in just four Classics for Pittsburgh and guaranteeing two games to Washington in the next four leaves 28 teams wondering when they'll get a shot at making an obscene amount of money.

Then came Saturday night, when the Stanley Cup Finals began.

In front of the 100th consecutive sellout crowd at the United Center in Chicago, the Blackhawks hosted the Philadelphia Flyers. The game wasn't the best played by either team, but it provided a wonderfully epic back-and-forth opening two periods of physical hockey with a lot of scoring.

The United Center averaged over 104 decibels, climaxing at 121 during the national anthem and 118 when Dave Bolland scored a short-handed goal early in the game. To put that noise into context, 120 decibels equates to sand blasting; 90-95 decibels of sustained noise is the breaking point for potential hearing loss.

And while the assembled media from Philadelphia complained that they were being bounced to the end of the sports news because of Roy Halladay's perfect game for the Phillies, all of the credentialed media on hand agreed that the hockey being played in Chicago was a blessing for the sport.

Cliff notes: television gold.

But how would the audience respond? Both Chicago and Philadelphia have incredibly passionate fans, and the ratings were a lock for NBC in those markets. Would this matchup that looked so intriguing to hockeyheads sell to the general public?

It did. Game One had the highest national television ratings for a Stanley Cup Finals game in 11 years.

Which circles back to my point about the Winter Classic being a huge mistake for the NHL. If the league is so naive that they truly believe the only two things they can sell to the North American television are Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, they will continue to have teams in middle markets filing for bankruptcy.

Chicago and Philadelphia are certainly not Phoenix or Tampa. But Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Mike Richards and Chris Pronger certainly don't carry the same level of name recognition on the continent that Ovechkin and Crosby do.

That isn't the fault of the players or their teams; it's the fault of the league not selling them.

But what overcomes even the worst marketing strategy is a quality product.

The television ratings for Saturday night should give the league confidence to have the "intestinal fortitude" to put more non-Ovechkin/Crosby superstar players into the national spotlight.

Maybe the world would like to see Steven Stamkos? Perhaps Ryan Getzlaf or John Tavarez or Marian Gaborik is worth putting on television?

As cheesy as it is to reference a baseball movie like "Field of Dreams" in an argument like this, the reality for Bettman is that he doesn't need to build anything.

"If you show it, they will watch."

There is some of the best young hockey talent emerging in the NHL right now that the game has seen in maybe 30 years. And yet the league continues to only promote two names.

As long as the league narrows itself into a pinhole, they'll continue to be treated like a fourth-class professional sport in North America. If the league can, somehow, figure out how to sell their game in every market the way the NFL does, they could once again be considered a premier sporting venue.

The product is there, Mr. Bettman. Now sell it!