Tampa Bay wins the cup

[Tom Lento]

You're absolutely right.  Never was able to control the ball in soccer, so maybe that's why I didn't think of it.  

[David Harding]

[Q]DisplacedCornellian Wrote:

 I don't think the talent pool is thinning significantly, Kyle.  The fact that the league has expanded and is reaching new markets undoubtedly increases the net size of the talent pool as talent is being found in previously untapped areas (see McKee, David), so it sort of balances out.  ...[/q]

Expanding the talent pool that way takes time.  You have to build a youth program, attract good athletes away from football, basketball, wrestling, baseball, soccer, and the other sports.  Find good coaches.  Raise the level of local competition to the point where the kids can go off to play junior hockey.  Until the second, or third, or fourth generation of pee-wee hockey players start to dribble ::rolleyes:: into the NHL ten or twenty years later, the talent pool has been diluted by the expansion.

[adamw]

There are vastly more Europeans in the NHL right now than there were before the recent wave of NHL expansion, i.e. 12 years.  Way more than enough to fill 9 teams.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Adam:

Are you suggesting that the NHL should contract some cities here, and start a few franchises in Europe (like Stockholm, Helsinki , Prague and Moscow),  It would be a bitch for TV coverage, but I think that would be a great idea.   Can you just picture them parading the Cup through Red Square?  :-P

I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime, but it would be neat to see.

JH

[CUlater 89]

I don't think Adam is suggesting that the NHL move franchises the Europe.  His point was that the talent level likely was not diluted, since at the same time that expansion occurred and the number of job increased, there has been an influx of workers from outside North America, workers who generally are more skilled than the North Americans.

[billhoward]

If the Rangers have the greatest value as a team, it goes to show big markets don't always guarantee the highest winning percentages. What: One Stanley Cup since the Depression ended? That's almost Red Sox territory.

[ninian '72]

To play devil's advocate, one might even suggest that expansion is necessary to increase the size of the talent and fan pool.  Would McKee be playing now if his only exposure to the sport was watching the Rangers on cable?  I doubt it.  

Kyle makes some good points about NFL and NBA salaries being tied to the size of tv revenue packages and that the NHL suffers in comparison in its broadcast exposure.  However, I doubt hockey will ever be able to rely as much on tv revenue as other major sports.  The major problem is that tv doesn't capture the essence of the sport well at all.  I shouldn't have to belabor the point with this crew.  You have to see the whole sheet to see how offenses and defenses set up and to appreciate the speed of the game.  Televised hockey, for those who haven't seen the real thing, just won't appeal.  It's possible that HDTV with full ice shots might go some distance in addressing this problem, but we're not there yet.

[billhoward]

HDTV is made for hockey. And lacrosse. Lax also benefits from being shot from the end zone up high; from the sidelines, you get less sense of how who's left and right of the goal.

Also golf. And swimsuit issues.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Of course.  I missed it because I skipped around the thread over the past few days.  D'oh!

JH

[ugarte]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

 Sorry about the comment, Age.  It is obviously an exaggeration.  But I would argue that you see a lot more people walking around in NYC wearing baseball, football or basketball paraphernalia than you do hockey.  [/q]The only thing you should apologize for, Keith, is that you wrote "NY" instead of "NYC".  That is how I've always heard the expression, and how I usually think about it.  I met far more Rangers fans from upstate NY (using the NYC definition of "upstate") in my first semester at SUNY-Albany than I did among the city residents during four years at an NYC high school.

The Rangers may have a large TV fan base, but the local fan base was historically built from a small cadre of die hards.  This changed quite a bit recently when (a) the Rangers FINALLY won the Cup and (b) tickets to Ranger games became insanely expensive. I wish I had been more of a fan when the phrase "blue seats" meant something. I'd have loved to be a part of that vibe. I may have even ended up a Ranger fan.