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That's like football in Texas. The fact is crowing about Minnesota or attendance in Montreal and Toronto do little to talk about the league as a whole struggling. There are 30 franchises, not 3. Not 6.
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Oh really? There are 30 teams? Thanks for the revelation. The league is struggling for a few reasons...
1. Lack of true nationwide TV exposure in the U.S. - its bascially regional coverage at best...
2. NHL marketing is only done during NHL games. - Unlike the NFL, NBA or other sports...the NHL only aires commercials DURING NHL games. You might see the odd NHL Centre Ice commercial on cable/dish, but you don't see general NHL ads during primetime TV like you do for the other major sports. The result is...awareness of the product outside of the die hard hockey fans is pretty low and apathetic to say the least.
3. Lockout & Fighting Stigma - Even though we hockey fans are acutely aware fighting is down and the lockout is over, the lack of awareness leads those "outside the loop" of hockey with just old stereotypes. Soccer mom's don't want their kids playing, watching or even thinking about the brutal game of hockey. They see a replay of the Bertuzzi Incident in their minds as they watched it on their local / national news broadcasts and think that's a common occurance in the NHL. Then the other part of this is stigma of the lockout; not so much as were the average sports fans hate hockey now; but rather the average sports fan is barely aware play has resumed. These fans barely noticed the NHL before and the lockout only re-inforced their belief not to care about the NHL even more.
4. Fighting is down - Like it or not, one of the attractions for some fans was the fact the NHL had fights. Some fans supremely just love watching two guys slug it out until their bloody messes on the ice. The crackdown on obstruction has required all players can skate and encourages teams to dress more skilled players and less thugs since most of them could only marginally skate. Some goons have managed to survive but that number is shrinking. Without the fights...some fans may argue the game seems to be more and more like soccer.
5. Versus vs. ESPN - While the quality of the broadcasters, analysis, and maybe even the graphics on Versus has been excellent; the constant broadcasting issues (audio and video difficulties) make it difficult for this network to really promote the league in a way the league really needs. Not to mention many Satelite owners had to PAY EXTRA just to get versus really hurts the exposure level of the sport, ESPN is STANDARD on many basic cable packages. ESPN is the pulse of the average American sports fan whether we hockey fans like that or not. And the average American sports fan doesn't really seem to care if they hear much about hockey; the ratings prove that time after time. A while back, a Dallas Stars fan who works in the TV business said that they virtually had to give away commercial time for NHL games. Why? No corporations wanted to buy commercial times during NHL games because so few watch...and commercials are all about exposing customers to your product/service. NHL games don't attract many viewers; the corporations know that so they don't want to pay much (if at all) to advertise.
Just a thought or three...