I agree with you guys on some things. But I think the NHL kinda gets screwed. Hockey is not marketed in the US like basketball or football. Think about it. In the 70's basketball was struggling pretty bad. Then they started marketing the hell out it. Jordan was in commercials TNT started marketing the laker/celtic feud. Jordan vs. Bird. Football is a marketing machine as well. Hockey had a little bit of a push behind it in the 80's with Gretzky and Lemieux.
Here is a good example. ESPN/Sportscenter. They have just about all the power in the world of sports. High School athletes when making a decicion on what school to play for are heavily swayed by how many games are played on ESPN. They want Dick Vitale to call them a diaper dandy, they want to be seen by 30 milliion in a bowl game. ESPN makes athletes into gods, period.
Each sport has an exciting element to it that everyone likes. For example a slam dunk. I think a slam dunk is equal to a good fight in hockey. There is more to hockey than fights, just like there is more to basketball than dunks. Sportscenter shows about 1,000 dunks per show. No hockey fights. They might show a few seconds of it, but thats it.
ESPN claims that they are a family network and do not want to show violence since they are owned by disney/abc. A bunch of BS. If there is one little scuffle in baseball, basketball, football, etc it is shown over and over. And lets face it hockey has the best fights. Any other sport EVERYONE jumps in and never let the guys go at it. Its so stupid. How many replays of Pedro martinez throwing don zimmer to the ground did you see? Buy the best of hockey fights 2004 dvd and you will be amazing fights that you never saw on ESPN.
Hockey is only played on cable w/ the exeption of CBC and a few games a year on abc (regular season). The exposure is limited as well. You could argue that the ratings are aweful, but they were good in the late 80's early nineties when they were marketing their big names like Gretzky.
Obviously I'm a hocey fan. I'm not Canadian, I am American, I think hockey could get off its feet in America its an exciting fast paced game. It needs a chance.