I first covered the National Hockey League as a young sportswriter getting started in the business.
I’ve written about the gamut of the national and international sports scene since, yet I’ve kept coming back to hockey and served for several years as one of the Professional Hockey Writers Association’s vice presidents. I doubled up as an ESPN.com hockey columnist on a freelance basis for eight years. I still enjoy writing about the sport, the game’s culture, and those in and around it.
Most important, I can quote entire scenes from “Slap Shot.” It’s an outrage that Nancy Dowd didn’t win an Oscar for best original screenplay.
So, darned right, I’m excited that NHL training camps opened a week ago, exhibition games are underway, and the opening of the regular season is approaching.
After showing off the best trophy in professional sports, the Stanley Cup, in their hometowns over the off-season, the St. Louis Blues will be defending their unlikely championship.
One thing I’ve always known: Hockey-first fans tend to be especially savvy and knowledgeable about the NHL and their sport, often to a greater degree than fans of other games and leagues.
More recently, the information explosion has highlighted that, with so many outlets for fan expression.
Beyond that, I’ve had a question for hockey-first fans virtually from the day I started covering the NHL. I’m not saying this attitude is universal. I’m saying it’s surprisingly common.
Why are you so proprietary about your sport?
My suggestions:
Be an ambassador for it.
Share it.
Welcome casual new fans, those who are unlikely to become immersed but will enjoy the game, to the fold.
Embrace the NHL trying to broaden its appeal to include more of the intelligent general sports fan base.
Don’t be disdainful of fans that candidly admit they’re climbing aboard the bandwagon of a winning team, or of the sport itself, without necessarily having any idea which defenseman played major junior for the Windsor Spitfires, or who and what “Corsi” is.
Bandwagons are All-American. They denote popularity and success. In anything.
Too often, the vibe given off to “new” hockey fans is that many would prefer the arenas to be closed clubs, for those who follow hockey first and foremost.
It’s almost as if to get in, you need more than a ticket, whether on your phone or in your hand.
You have to know the night’s password.
(Always try “Swordfish” first. Then “Gretzky.”)
Among other things, hearing a knowledgeable hockey fan explaining offside, icing and the trapezoid and the significance of Cole Harbour on a couple’s first date can be aggravating if you’re within earshot in the bar or arena.
But she’s simply trying to get the poor guy up to speed. (Yes, I’m convinced the majority of deeply knowledgeable hockey fans are women).
Yet in no other sport do you so often encounter this kind of it’s-our-sport attitude.
It doesn’t happen in football, basketball and baseball, where it accepted that knowledge of the sports themselves can and will run the gamut from encyclopedic to minimal.
For hockey’s proponents, it’s bit defensive.
It’s a reaction to a perceived lack of respect – there’s that word, sorry – for hockey from the media and general sports fandom. But it also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It leans right into the punch, the image of the NHL as the most “niche” of the major leagues.
The contradiction is that when many members of the media, ranging from sports talk hosts to influential columnists to sports anchors, try to jump in and discuss the NHL, while admitting they’re more conversant about football, basketball or baseball, they’re challenged: What the hell do you know? Where have you been? Go back to the riveting NFL discussions about the tight ends and upcoming roster cuts.
The truth is, though, that intimidates some in the media (you’re right … poor babies), hockey is nowhere near as complicated as some its proponents want to make it.
It really isn’t.
And we’re finally getting past the other plague of hockey in the past. That’s when the tenets of the NHL’s “Code” were challenged as archaic or downright stupid – as in the aftermath of the infamous Todd Bertuzzi attack on Steve Moore in 2004 – the reflexive response from many clinging to tradition was: If you disagree with me, you don’t know the game!
So is that image accurate? Is hockey a niche sport?
Of course it is.
After going from rabbit ears and two stations 70 years ago to literally hundreds of choices today, even among sporting events alone, everything popular in 21st century America is at best a “niche” – well, except maybe for “Game of Thrones.”
Hockey-first fans. It’s a great sport. You have chosen wisely. But stop blocking the doorway. Welcome and let the general sports fan in on the fun – literally and figuratively.
About Terry: Terry Frei is the author of seven books. His novels are Olympic Affair and The Witch’s Season, and among his five non-fiction works are Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming, Third Down and a War to Go, and ’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age. Information is available on his web site, terryfrei.com. His woodypaige.com archive can be found here.
