The NHL on TV in America has been missing something; a night that makes the NHL on TV an event. The reason this is a problem in America is that at no point in the year does hockey even threaten to dominate the national sports conversation.
The NHL has long been thought of as a regional sport. The idea is that fans care about the team, or teams, in their area and aren’t concerned with the other teams in the league. I think this is one half of a “chicken and egg argument” though as there is no unified coverage of the league as a whole. Unlike the other major American sports that have a weekly touchstone event so fans can be engaged with a league, and it’s best teams at a national level. Nothing like this exists for the NHL. There have been different attempts at creating this type of program over the years, but because they didn’t seem clear in direction or objective they have failed.
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The first attempt was ESPN’s National Hockey Night. These broadcasts were high quality and put the NHL on a national spotlight. Between the presentations of the games and ESPN’s accompanying news show, NHL 2Night, it was apparent that ESPN was trying to grow the game out of it’s regional nature. The issue with how ESPN scheduled the games was that they tried to grow ratings instead of the game. They stuck with a few cities that either had large populations or were already devoted hockey markets.
The current attempt at this is NBCSN’s Rivalry Night. While there are a lot of things to like about Rivalry Night it has a couple of major issues that hold it back from being what the sport really needs to grow.
The first is that it is on NBCSN and not on NBC. While NBC broadcasts a few games on Sunday afternoon’s on NBC they relegate most games to NBCSN. This does work for the ABC/ESPN tandem for the NBA but ESPN has a lot more visibility than NBCSN. Also, in the modern cable era of television sports on the broadcast networks tend to carry more weight. Not to mention the fact that NBC is available to anyone with a television.
Union and Blue
The second is that the teams on the Rivalry Night broadcasts are limited. NBC has so far chosen to play pretty safe with their choices of teams. They normally choose teams from large established hockey markets. To grow the game they need to take chances by showing teams that are compelling on the ice even if they doing carry a guaranteed ratings number.
The third is that, apart from a very small studio show, they do nothing to provide context or to make the event feel as grand. As much as I have heard fans from north of the border complain about how Rogers has changed the presentation of the NHL; I think NBC needs to create a production modeled on Hockey Night in Canada.
NBC already produces a show similar to this. Check out Football Night In America on NBC during the fall. They bring in a big name host, discuss the league as a whole and then broadcast a marquee matchup.
I find it impossible to think that if NBC told the NHL they would want to do the same with hockey on Saturday nights that the NHL wouldn’t bend over backwards to make sure there would be good match-ups on Saturday nights.
It would be an incredible night for hockey fans to rally around: Saturday nights on NBC Hockey Night in America. It would begin with an hour long studio show hosted by Dan Patrick, analysts Mike Milbury, Keith Jones, Bob McKenzie and Jeremey Roenick. Each week the best Saturday night games would be flexed into the national window so that the whole country could see them. It wouldn’t require much more investment in their NHL presentation then they have already done. Just more direction.
So the idea is out there now NBC. I’ve waited a long time for a true national weekly game for the NHL on tv, and I can wait a bit longer.