Could you name this past year’s Stanley Cup championship hockey team? How about the leading goal scorer in the National Hockey League? Most Americans just don’t know. And though I consider myself an avid hockey fan, I had to look up the latter answer (Vincent Lecavalier).

Not too long ago, professional hockey featured household names such as Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, and Wayne Gretzky. Yet, over the past ten years the sport has been losing its appeal amongst American sports fans. After the 2003-2004 season, the NHL lost its $60 million television contract with sports television titan ESPN. Now, the NHL games are broadcast on the lesser known Versus Network, which reaches 20 million fewer homes than ESPN. Three 2007 Stanley Cup Championship games aired on NBC, but they only mustered a 1.6 rating, a 20 percent decrease in viewers of the same three games of last year’s Stanley Cup. These figures pale in comparison to the 4.0 rating for the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals on FOX.

Recent attendance figures at NHL games paint a slightly less bleak picture of the core fan base. During the 2005-2006 season, the NHL filled its arenas to an impressive 91.7 percent of capacity and the Montreal Canadiens (the New York Yankees of hockey; winners of 24 Stanley Cups) drew sellout crowds to all of their 41 home games.  But while hockey hotbeds such as Montreal, Toronto, and New York have sustained their attendance figures into the 2006-2007 season, other teams have not been able to sustain large crowds. Both traditional markets like Boston and St. Louis and newer ones like Miami and Phoenix have seen their turnouts drop to under 80 percent of capacity. These figures demonstrate that the NHL still can appeal to its loyal fan base in certain locales in the United States and all of Canada, yet the casual American sports fan has lost interest in professional hockey. How did this happen?

The NHL still can appeal to its loyal fan base in certain locales in the United States and all of Canada, yet the casual American sports fan has lost interest in professional hockey.

Perennial labor disputes between the players union and team ownership have hurt hockey’s ability to market itself to the general public. The most recent lockout occurred during the 2004-2005 NHL season when team owners and the players union could not agree to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. As a result, the entire season was cancelled, a first in American professional sports history. The magnitude of the lockout and perceived capriciousness of the owners’ demands alienated many casual NHL fans. Media coverage of the dispute exposed deeper financial troubles for the league.

All these business troubles owe something to a larger pattern of difficulty with the NHL’s on-ice product. The addition of new teams in markets in the Sunbelt and Southwest has increased the size of the league from 22 teams in 1991 to 30 teams in 2000, eight new teams in just nine years. This rapid rate of expansion created the need for approximately 225 more professional hockey players at any given time. But the talent development infrastructure was geared to the smaller number of teams, and there are only a limited number of NHL-caliber players available. Teams have had to accommodate less talented players, hurting the quality of play. Sports columnist Bill Simmons mused after the expansion era had concluded, “Overexpansion diluted the product and made it nearly impossible for casual fans to follow the sport.”

Partially as a result of overexpansion, teams began adopting restrictive, defensive styles of play rather than offensive strategies that depend more on speed and skill. Teams often used these strategies to compensate for their lack of offensive talents, slowing the tempo of the game down to a larghissimo like pace. Final scores of 2-1 and 1-0 became more common. This is not the type of exciting game one would expect when buying a $40 ticket, let alone watching for two hours on the couch.

After the lockout, the NHL changed some rules to open up play and create more scoring. The changes have helped: NHL teams scored a collective 6.3 goals per game during the 2005-2006 season, up from 5.1 goals per game in 2003-2004. However, these numbers pale in comparison to the 8.03 goals per game scored in 1981-1982. Many fans and hockey executives want to implement drastic changes in order to bump scoring back to the levels of the 1980s, hockey’s most recent heyday. One of those changes would be to increase the size of the ice surface.

Increasing the size of the ice in current NHL ice arenas would be a costly proposition.

NHL teams currently grind out games on an ice surface which is 200 feet long and 85 feet wide. Those who argue for increasing the ice say that while the players have gotten larger, the ice size has remained the same, preventing the larger players from moving around the ice freely and displaying their full array of talents. These advocates point to the larger size of the international ice surface as an example for the NHL. International ice is 98.5 feet wide and international professional play is known for its high octane style of play, raw displays of speed and skill, and most importantly, high scoring. Detractors of ice expansion say that increasing the size of the ice will reduce the amount of physicality in the traditional hard-hitting North American games. But the bottom line may yet win out.

Increasing the size of the ice in current NHL ice arenas would be a costly proposition. Since NHL arenas are currently configured to fit the 85 foot wide ice surface, the arenas would need to be retrofitted to accommodate the wider ice. That means knocking out some of the most expensive seats in the arena. Even if owners were to apply the premium pricing to the next two rows of seats, they would still stand to lose money. Yes, there would be more premium seats because the perimeter of the ice would be larger (and thus able to incorporate a greater amount of seats along the ice). But, owners would still lose two or (most likely) more rows of seats in the lower seating bowl overall.

In order to make up for the loss of revenue, owners would have to raise the price of admission to the arenas. While some, including St. Louis Blues General Manager Larry Pleau, have argued that increased ticket prices are a necessary cost of building a better game, most ownership groups would balk at the move. Can you blame them? At a time when the NHL is losing fans, increasing ticket prices could create even more ill will with the fans and drive even more of them away from arenas and perhaps from the game itself.

Hockey may need a miracle of grand slam proportions to revive is flagging reputation.

The only way owners could simultaneously accommodate a larger ice surface and greater ticket revenues is by building entirely new arenas for their teams. If these new arenas were constructed to house a larger ice surface, then they could fit a greater amount of premium seats around the ice surface due to the naturally greater perimeter of the wider ice. But the next wave of arena construction is most likely twenty or more years away: Out of the 30 NHL franchises, only six have arenas that were built before 1993. This means that the vast majority of NHL arenas are 15 years old or younger. The large capital cost of arenas makes it improbable that new ones will soon be replaced.

And even if teams were to expand the ice surface, many sports observers claim that hockey’s problems run deeper than merely widening the skating lanes. Allen Sanderson, a Senior Lecturer in economics at the University of Chicago who focuses on sports economics, argues that “most people would not mind watching [Major League Baseball stars] Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens pitch and have the score end up being one 1-0 or 2-0. But if it’s no one they have heard of, like in hockey, then most people would find the games to be very boring.” Sanderson also believes that sports like soccer and hockey have trouble marketing themselves during games because there are not frequent timeouts, leaving fewer opportunities for promotions.

Improving hockey’s image amongst the American sporting public will be a tough sell. Even baseball, America’s pastime, faced broad unpopularity and economic perils after its notorious 1994 players strike. Only many years of penance and the epic 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa finally restored baseball to its historically revered state. Hockey may need a miracle of grand slam proportions to revive is flagging reputation.

Jordan Fabian is an editorial intern at The American.

Image credit: Photo by Flickr user The Bucky Hermit