ESPN Hockey

Yes, it is hockey! No, it is not the NHL.  It is the KHL, the premier professional hockey league outside of the US.  ESPN is showing some upcoming games featuring the world's best players (Ovechkin, Chara, Kovalchuk, Malkin, and Gonchar) while the owners continue to lock out the NHL players.  The KHL is receiving press because ESPN is airing games, but there is a mass exodus of NHL players to multiple European leagues from Sweden and Finland to Germany and Switzerland.  This is never a good sign in the midst of a lockout and is really a bummer for hockey fans in North America.  So what do we take from all of this?

Watch the games on ESPN and show the NHL the value of putting games on a TV channel that matters.  Even when the league eventually comes back games will be on NBC Sports, a channel the majority do not receive.  Gary Bettman has done an abysmal job promoting the NHL and has passed up opportunities to grow the sport via the largest cable sports channel in the country.  A lot of marketing is purely about visibility, and Bettman has limited the visibility of the NHL with his terrible choices.  He has treated the product with disrespect and in turn slapped the fans in the face.  So watch the ESPN games to ensure the ratings are solid.  We want to watch hockey and will tune it when it is available to us!  We will not however watch a league that does not do what is right for it's fans that pay the salaries.

Go out and support your minor league hockey teams.  All across the country are guys playing in the AHL, ECHL, and CHL trying to earn their way to the next level while putting on a show for their fans.  These games often feature great young players and teams loaded with talent making games very exciting.  The atmosphere is often more fun as the buildings are smaller with a lot of noise and entertainment going on.  These teams are also all over the place making their games accessible for even more fans.

There is also college hockey for all to enjoy.  Like minor league hockey, you have a lot of young and talented players that are playing hard for their school and for their future career.  These are exciting games with the great atmospheres we all love at college sports events.  The bands are playing and students are all dressed in their school colors.  Between the minors and college, there is no shortage of hockey to enjoy.

So the KHL is on ESPN and there is a lot of live hockey for us to enjoy.  Support these teams!  We as fans do not need to be subject to the whims of owners and a commissioner that have no thought of how their decisions effect workers in arenas, families of these employees, and of course all of us fans.  Get out there and learn some new names, and see that we all can enjoy hockey even without the NHL.