Roller Hockey International: How the NHL Messed Up for the 104,232nd Time.

A long time ago, in a decade known as the 90′s, hockey, like Ron Burgundy, was kind of a big deal. Or at least it had the potential to be. Then the NHL messed it up.

Although the NHL had always been popular to us in Canada, it hadn’t really cracked the lucrative American market the way that the NFL, NBA and MLBA had. But in the 90′s things started to change in the its favour; Wayne Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles and started hanging with movie stars, the New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar introduced middle America to the phrase ‘Game Ooooooon!’ and Sports Illustrated went as far as championing the league on its front cover.

With hockey fever building among the great unwashed, the NHL had two options:

1. To promote their brand, teams and superstars strongly and foster excitement in the game by ensuring a quality on-ice product.

OR

2. To make a quick buck by putting teams in untested markets and risk ruining any interest in those markets by giving them a mediocre on-ice product.

Anyone who’s ever uttered the words ‘hockey puck’ knows that the NHL, led by former NBA golden boy and new NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, chose the latter. Now, this isn’t meant to read like an anti-Gary Bettman tirade because there are more than enough of those out there. What I’m more interested in is examining the missed opportunities that caused the NHL to fall into sporting oblivion.

Most of these have been well documented; the 1994 lockout, the increase in obstruction (hooking, holding, interference) the relocation of franchises and massive expansion into undeveloped markets. Of these, the one that has always intrigued me is the expansion of the league into markets that weren’t ready to support an NHL franchise. Clearly, we can now look back at the expansion of the 90′s and agree that if it can’t be considered a monumental disaster , it was at least a terrible misjudgment. Arbitrarily plunking teams into America’s sunbelt and expecting them to succeed has to be considered one of the biggest blunders in professional sports management history.

Now, what should have the NHL done? How could they have cashed in on the hockey craze of the 90′s without exploiting themselves and diluting the game beyond the point of recognition? Well, one way would have been to cash in on another craze of the extreme-sport-friendly 90′s, rollerblading. More specifically roller hockey and the RHI (Roller Hockey International).

The RHI was a pro roller hockey league, the only at the time, that was mostly comprised of minor leaguers who were looking to stay in shape and make a few bucks during the NHL, AHL and IHL offseason. It came and went quickly, rolling in on the scene in 1993 and rolling back out in 1999. The RHI had some teams in traditional hockey markets like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Detroit and Minneapolis but what’s more interesting to me is its inclusion of teams in non-traditional markets like Anaheim, Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa Bay, all of which have NHL teams now. NHL teams that don’t make any money.

The average league attendance during the RHI’s peak (1997 season) was 4,872, pretty decent considering it was a second tier, even third tier professional sport. In fact if you exclude 1999, a season that followed a year off, average attendance never dipped below 3,800.  Perhaps surprisingly the attendance leader in each season was the Anaheim Bullfrogs, a team that was by all accounts the most successful in the league’s history. They won two RHI championships and put together an impressive record in the league’s five year run. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that Anaheim was the league’s attendance leader, after all they were wildly successful on the ice (floor?) and southern California was, at the time, ground zero for inline sports.

Although figures are not available online, we can assume that the operating costs for an RHI team were very low compared to that of an NHL team. There were no guaranteed contracts in the RHI, players were paid by splitting prize money that was based on their final standings and playoff performance.

There were some significant rule differences between NHL hockey and RHI hockey that are worth noting. They played 4 on 4, had shorter penalties,  no offsides and used shootouts to resolve ties. The average number of goals scored per game in the RHI was 16.7 compared to the NHL’s 7. During a period when the NHL was struggling to score and fight through the neutral zone trap, the RHI placed an emphasis on playmaking and scoring.

When the RHI ceased operations in 1999, only to try and revive themselves a year later unsuccessfully, the NHL surely saw this as good news. To them, the RHI were stealing a share of the NHL market with a bastardized version of one of the fastest, toughest, most beautiful games in the world. Instead, what should have happened is that the NHL should have recognized the value of the RHI and used it to help grow the game in the untested expansion markets of America’s south.

Had the NHL stepped in to help the RHI, I’m certain that it would have benefited both leagues in the long run. Grassroots participation, it has been said, is the best way to grow a sport in an undeveloped market. But consider the obstacles in place for growing the game of hockey in places like Florida, Texas and California. Firstly, there’s no ice, which is kind of necessary for playing ice hockey. Secondly, it’s expensive. Thirdly, there’s no culture of hockey in these places.

Here’s where I think the NHL missed out on the enormous opportunity that the RHI presented: Had they supported it properly the NHL could have taken the sport of roller hockey and introduced it into these markets and grown the sport from the grassroots up. Surely there would be more kids playing roller hockey, because there’s concrete everywhere and rollerblades are relatively cheap. Eventually, a culture of hockey would be created and a valuable roller hockey market might grow into a valuable hockey market. Instead, the NHL chose the balls-out approach and decided to force upon these markets a sport that they didn’t understand, couldn’t afford and, due to a lack of facilities, couldn’t even play if they wanted. Why not start a pro curling league in the Middle East?

I often bring up my idea of an RHI/NHL partnership with friends or family and invariably someone new to the conversation will say something like ‘Hey, I remember going to that with my Dad. What ever happened to it?’ And that’s really all that’s left of the RHI, anecdotal evidence of another hockey league that failed. But considering that the RHI could have been cheap to operate, that it showcased hockey’s most exciting plays(playmaking and scoring), and most importantly that it could have been used as a tool to grow the sport of hockey in new markets, it makes me wonder how such an oversight was made. Then, of course, I remind myself that this is, after all, the NHL and Gary Bettman; oversights and mistakes are what they do best.

Stats and figures taken from http://rhistats.tripod.com/

TC 2.0

I recently spent two weeks in Greece, honeymooning with my new wife, where I spent some time reflecting on my career as a writer so far. Time away from my computer monitor helped me realize that ironically, I don’t write enough. Granted I am a professional writer and my ability to write is what pays my bills, but I rarely get to use even a fraction of my full literary powers in a typical day of work. In fact, what I do in a normal day may not even be considered writing to purists, they’d call it documentation.There are exceptions of course, and these are the projects that I relish. They usually involve writing web copy for a wide eyed start up, or collaborating with other writers and developers on creative and unique ads. These projects are fun because they allow me to explore style and voice.  But for the most part, I’m resigned to research and documentation, the white bread of the written word.

So there I sat, feeling sorry for myself. I rarely get to write interesting stuff and each day I’m getting further and further away from becoming a great writer. Woe is me.

The answer to this should have been obvious all along; write more. With blogs there are no rules, so why am I restricting myself to commenting only on the digital world in my own blog? Why can’t I write about hockey, German psyche-rock, Wanderlei Silva, camping etiquette  and anything else I feel like in addition to writing about XHTML and modular documentation? Well the answer is ‘you can, stupid’.

Still, I’ve always been hesitant to publish personal thoughts or opinions on a blog because I’m not the kind of person that needs to have these things validated by a group of readers. It also doesn’t pay me squat.  What I’ve now come to realize is that I can benefit enormously as a writer by using the medium to improve my writing rather than just showcase my writing. So from now on, I will make full effort to do that.

For better or for worse, I’ll be posting to this blog a lot more often than before, whenever the mood should strike me, on any number of topics. Hopefully it will have the desired effect.