Part One*
The NHL's American Marketing Problem

In the NFL, we have scandal.

In the NBA, we have potentially game-related scandal.

In MLB, we have the the almost certainly tarnished* home run record scandal.

Meanwhile, in the NHL, we have the game's best player celebrating his new contract in style .

Oh, sure, it's really, really nice that the youngest professional scoring champion in the history of any of the major sports spends his offseason working out diligently in preparation for the upcoming season. It's also so, so sweet that the youngest captain in the history of his professional sports league prefers to spend his summer evenings in the company of his family.

Truthfully, however, Sidney Crosby's summer is far too dull for the tastes of the majority of American sports fans. Say what you will for Americans, but we live for scandal. Witness how many of us tuned into follow the saga of the OJ Simpson trial. Witness how many Americans watch the NFL in spite of the shenanigans of a segment of the NFLPA best represented by the
Cincinatti Bengals. Like it or not, Americans love conflict and drama, and scandals promise loads of conflict-filled drama.

Thus, problem number one for the NHL is the general lack of scandal surrounding their players and game. (Really, one drug policy violation? This despite protestations/perhaps proof of innocence?). Of late, anyhow, on and off the ice, the NHLPA has busied itself more with finding a new director than with making news by headlining the kind of scandals that American "journalists" report because that's what sells the papers and gets the ratings.

Unfortunately for the NHL, in addition to lacking the type of scandals that will grab immediate hold of the American public, the NHL has a history of too many of the wrong kinds of scandals.
Incidents like the this infamous one give the NHL a black eye in the estimation of American fans who don't expect that kind of violence to extend to the actual game itself. Worse still for the NHL, when one of their players does something stupid and/or reckless off the ice, the incidents don't typically end in jail time but in tragedy. When a hockey player finds himself in a scandal, it's usually for acting like a Neanderthal on the ice or some comparatively "minor" form of equally reckless behavior off the ice. (Bar fights, even repeated bar fights obviously pale in comparison to "murder for hire" scandals.) The scandals in which NHL players have previously found themselves are not the type of scandals that will typically grab the attention of the American public enough for "journalists" to "headline" these stories.

So, then, the NHL has twin problems when it comes to marketing the NHL product to the average American sports fan. Problem number one is that hockey players, on the whole, just don't appear to do enough off the ice to capture the attention of an American public that--ratings don't lie--lives for scandal or at least, drama rife with conflict. Problem number two is that when NHL players do indeed grab the headlines, they grab the headlines for off-ice issues that are so minor as to be boring to Americans accustomed to Grade-A scandals. Problem number two is compounded by the fact that some prior on-ice, in-game issues scream for the justice of prosecution and judicial punishment far more than do most of the silly shenanigans in which a small segment of NHL players engage off the ice.

So, then, two questions must be asked. First, how does the NHL, given these two identified problems, begin to market the game to appeal to the average American sports fan? Second, and this question is far more important, given the average American's lust for conflict-rife scandal, should the NHL even desire to start marketing the game to the average American sports fan?

*In the follow-up to this post, possible solutions to this marketing problem will be explored.*