The NHL is dead

On June 14, 1994 Mark Messier lifted the Stanley Cup in front of a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden ending a 54-year drought for the New York Rangers. Wayne Gretzky had been traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles in August 1988, and Messier from Edmonton to New York in October 1991, landing the two greatest players from the NHL's greatest team in the two greatest cities in the world's greatest country. The NHL was at an all-time high in popularity. It was big in New York and Los Angeles, it led Sportscenter at points during the regular season, the NHL had expanded from 21 teams to 26 in a three season span, and with Michael Jordan playing baseball, it looked like the NHL was poised to take on the NBA.

Unfortunately, the 1993-94 NHL season was played without a collective bargaining agreement, and on October 1, the owners locked out the players. After 104 days and 468 cancelled regular season games, along with the All Star Game, all momentum from the previous season was lost, especially in the expansion cities of the three previous years (San Jose, Ottawa, Tampa Bay, Anaheim, and Ft. Lauderdale). The Rangers snuck into the playoffs as the 8th seed and lost in the second round.

The Rangers reacted by trading for Luc Robitaille during the summer and Wayne Gretzky during the season, but they still missed the playoffs that year. The following year Gretzky and Messier led the team to the Eastern Conference Finals, but Vancouver lured Messier away in the off-season. Looking for someone to replace Messier, the Rangers signed Colorado Avalanche restricted free agent Joe Sakic, then 28, to a 3-year, $21 million offer sheet in August 1997. At that time, NHL unrestricted free agents had to be 31 or older. Restricted free agents were rarely signed to offer sheets, because teams would match the offers for stars, and for lesser players the draft pick compensation would be prohibitive. Colorado matched the offer, more than doubling Sakic's 96-97 salary for $3.1 million, and raising the level of compensation for NHL stars not yet eligible for free agency to as much as NFL and MLB star free agents were getting, despite the fact that the sum total of TV money the NHL was receiving was less than what the New York Yankees received by themselves.

Paul Kariya was coming off a 99 point third NHL season for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and held out for Sakic money. As a Group 2 free agent, Kariya was eligible for neither arbitration nor to sign an offer sheet so Anaheim was only obligated to pay him 10% more than his $2.075 million 96-97 salary. But after a 32 game hold out Anaheim resigned Kariya to a 2-year, $14 million deal in December 1997, and the next round of unrestricted free agents had two new huge contracts at which to point. The Philadelphia Flyers gave Eric Lindros a 2-year, $16 million extension in January 1998. The Avalanche gave Peter Forsberg a 3-year, $30 million deal in April 1999. During the 1996-97 season, Mario Lemieux and Mark Messier were the only 2 players who made more than $5 million. That number grew to 7 the following year, 13 the year after that, and 21 the year after that. Second line center Bobby Holik signed a stunning 5-year, $45 million deal in August 2002 that paid him more yearly than any player in the NFL besides Brett Favre. In 1998 and 1999 the NHL expanded by a team a year, and then added 2 more in 2000.

All this time, the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was the product of the 1994 lockout loomed. It was to expire in the fall of 2004, and with player salaries spiraling out of control, along with the existence of salary caps in the NBA and NFL, there was a general consensus in the sports that a salary cap in the NHL was inevitable. A salary cap in sports generally assigns a maximum amount that clubs can spend on payroll, usually in terms of a percentage of the sports revenues. For example, the most recent NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement capped player salaries at 59.5% of gross revenues. According to former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt, NHL player salaries had reached a stunning 76% of gross revenue.

The NHLPA, led by Executive Director Bob Goodenow, balked at a salary cap for months, not including it in proposals until February, which would have been the approximate midpoint of the season and after commissioner Gary Bettman had set a drop-dead date for the 2004-05 season on February 9. A week later, after some rumors of a deal brokered by Gretzky and Lemieux, negotiations fell apart and the season was cancelled.

Prior to the 1994 lockout the NHL was seen as the 4th major sports league, behind the NFL, MLB, and NBA. In the decade that had passed, Tiger Woods had emerged on the PGA Tour, winning his first major in June, 1997, and single handedly drawing huge weekend ratings when he was competing. NASCAR signed their first centralized television contract in December 1999. Before, individual races had individual TV deals; now, viewers would have a better idea what channel would have a race. But most damning, ESPN had replaced NHL games with the World Series of Poker, and poker was killing in the ratings. 1.5 million households tuned in to the World Series of Poker in 2004 on ESPN; by comparison 1.985 million households tuned in to the 2004 All Star Game on NBC, the highest rated game of the season. Also in WSOP's favor: no poker players' union, no chance of a lockout, and since the airing were often prerecorded, no games were affixed the if necessary tag.

July 21, 2005 the NHLPA and owners agreed to a CBA featuring a $39 million cap. Because of the cancelled season, the rookie class for the 2005-06 season included players who would have been rookies the year before. Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby each had rookie campaigns that compared to the all time greats.

ABC and ESPN had the broadcast rights for NHL prior to the lockout. ABC gave way to NBC with a deal that featured revenue sharing to minimize NBC's risk. The NHL rejected a similar offer from ESPN, giving way to the relatively unknown OLN (Outdoor Life Network), which had featured the Tour de France in 2004, to broadcast the games on cable. OLN is now called the Versus Network.

From 1988-92, the NHL aired on SportsChannel America. For the previous 3 years, the NHL had aired on ESPN; SportsChannel America had offered more money but reached 1/3 of the households that ESPN did at the time. Currently, Versus is available in 59% of cable households in the LA area, up from 49% last year, whereas ESPN is available in 100%. The numbers bore out in the ratings: games 1 and 2 of the 2006 Stanley Cup Final reached 610,836 and 605,501 households, respectively, down from approximately 1 million for ESPN in 2004. 474,298 households tuned in to the 2007 All Star game, a precipitous 76% drop from 2004.

A common rallying cry for NHL faithful is that once HD televisions are more widespread, then hockey will be a more attractive television property since the puck would be easier to follow. However, in HD golf and tennis balls are easier to follow, poker tells are easier to read, and NASCAR wrecks are more spectacular. Unfortunately for the NHL, those sports are on major networks, and although the Versus Network can be difficult to find for cable viewers, Versus HD can be impossible to find, only airing on auxiliary HD channels on cable outlets. So it seems wrong to hail HD as a savior, especially when, according to the Wall Street Journal, only half of the 24 million households with HDTVs are set up to receive HD programming.

I count myself as a hockey fan, so it's hard to watch a quadruple overtime thriller get preempted by an infomercial, which happened during Dallas' game 1 opening round victory over Vancouver. But when I try to objectively gauge the interest level of the American public in the NHL, it comes up lower than pretty much anything that counts itself as a spectator sport.