My Platform to Become Commissioner of the NHL

A few days ago, my friends and I were having a pretty heated discussion over beers at our favorite local watering hole. The topic of hockey came up. Now, most of my friends have been turned into fans of the great game since knowing me, but my friend Pam remains unconvinced.

She complained about a lot of things in the game, including the absurd team names, hard to pronounce player names, and the like. Now, this rant of hers got me thinking: what if I were commissioner of the NHL? What would I do? Who would I axe?

Well, the first act of my administration would be to expand opening day. This season, there were two sets of European games, and they were viewed as a modest success by the league. This idea is a good one. However, I would expand upon it.

Instead of just having two or four teams playing games on foreign soil, I would instead institute the idea of a “Face-off Weekend”. All 30 teams would play games in 15 world cities. The cities would include Washington DC, Toronto, London, Madrid, Brussels, Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen.

Each city would host two games. The teams would switch off being the home team. In terms of coverage, there is the potential for NBC to televise the games across all of its networks, including USA, MSNBC, and CNBC. Also, NHL Gamecenter could offer special weekend passes to watch live games online.

To determine which teams play where, there would be a special drawing two weeks before “Face-off Weekend”, and it would essentially be a random lottery to determine who would play where. A portion of the proceeds of this event could benefit a charity such as Red Cross or Salvation Army. That way, the NHL would be helping these countries and others in need.

My second proposal would be to have a designated “Original Six” day. On this day, which would be the first Friday of the season, the Original Six franchises would play three games, and all three games would be televised on Versus.

The teams would all wear retro uniforms, and the event could serve not only as a great opening to the North American portion of the season, but also as a history lesson for the NHL’s younger fans.

My third proposal is to move the Winter Classic from New Year’s Day to Christmas Day, a move designed to get the game away from the competition of the NCAA bowl games played on that day. I would also make it two games instead of one, with one scenario being an all-New York day, featuring the Rangers/Islanders and the Devils/Sabres in a doubleheader at either Citi Field or the new Yankee Stadium.

Other sites I would consider for the game would be Lambeau Field, the new Minnesota Gophers stadium in Minneapolis, and Ohio Stadium in Columbus. The Big House at Michigan could also be a great venue for the game.

My fourth and final proposal would be to restore a tradition back to NHL arenas: fan voting booths for the All-Star Game. Now, I would not bring back the archaic paper ballots, but would instead make voting in-sync with current times. I would have the teams set up a number of booths with computers whose sole purpose is to process votes for the game.

I would also add an incentive to voting in the arenas: one lucky fan from each of the 30 arenas would win a pair of season tickets to the team of their choice. All 30 teams would have a winner, and this would hopefully bring more people into the fold in terms of participation in the process.

In addition to bringing back arena voting, I would also install a “Last Man In” vote, similar to that in baseball. The vote could be held via online voting and text messaging, to bring in as many people as possible. These ideas would encourage fan participation, and would also continue to grow the game through the real assets of the league: the fans.

My actions as commissioner would obviously just be a start toward the many methods that can be implemented to help continue to grow the league. The NHL is still rebuilding from the devastating player lockout of a few years ago, and they are doing a solid job so far.

With these changes to the schedule and the All-Star Game, my hope would be that the league would become a substantial force once again on the American sports scene, and that fans would flock to hockey in greater numbers than ever before.

This ad was paid for by Jim Neveau for NHL Commissioner