League Aims for Gold in Ratings

It will be interesting to see how the NBA’s agreement in principle on a new national television contract in which Disney--the parent company of ABC and ESPN--bid to pay the league an average of $400 million a year will affect the NHL.

Disney owns NHL broadcasting rights in the United States until 2004 and it’s difficult to imagine hockey getting a fair shake, especially because the corporation had to outbid NBC to end that network’s 12-year relationship with the NBA.

When it comes to ratings, the NHL will always take a back seat to the NBA in the U.S. Just look at last year when the NBA had a 12% ratings decline in the regular season from the year before but still nearly tripled the NHL ratings.

That’s why Disney and cable partners Turner Broadcasting and AOL Sports are willing to give the NBA such a sweet deal. The combined rights fee is worth almost $650 million a year, which is $30 million a year more than what the NBA is paid by NBC and Turner under the final year of a four-year contract.

When Disney bought the NHL’s television and cable rights for a record $600 million for five years beginning in 1999, Commissioner Gary Bettman hoped the league would grow through appearances on ABC shows, involvement in all the ESPN properties, including the ESPN SportsZone and ESPN The Magazine, and Internet interaction.

Unfortunately, the returns have been questionable at best.

Ratings have been about the same as they were when Fox carried hockey in the 1990s, and last season’s regular-season ratings dropped 15% from the year before.

But Mark Mandel, the vice president of media relations for ABC, told the Toronto Globe and Mail that it will not be a problem for ABC to broadcast both leagues and that the network is satisfied with the results of its hockey telecasts over the last two years.

With a potential lockout looming once the current collective bargaining agreement ends, the NHL faced tough times even before the NBA’s deal with Disney. Salaries have gotten out of control, attendance is down in some key markets and the quality of play hasn’t improved much despite a series of rule changes in recent years.

The league, which recently lost sponsors such as IBM, Wendy’s and Nortel Networks, is banking on a boost from an exciting Olympics featuring NHL players to help raise its stock.

It’s the NHL’s best hope. If the league’s ratings don’t perk up over the final two years under Disney, expect hockey to be a lot harder to find on television, unless you have cable.

Qualifying Problems

If the NHL’s reason for allowing its players to participate in the Olympics is to help popularize hockey around the world, then the league is making a mistake by not forcing teams to allow players to play in a qualifying round, starting Feb. 9.

The way it is now, the league’s integrity is in question when teams such as Phoenix, St. Louis and Ottawa allow their players to play, while other teams, such as the Kings, don’t.

“I know I’d be upset if a team that we weren’t playing chose not to dress all their players, and another team beat them and edged us out for the playoffs,” Nashville General Manager David Poile said. “What you do affects other teams as well.”

It’s not the players’ fault that they play for national teams that have three qualifying games, such as Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland.

The players who are going to the qualifying games aren’t likely to miss any NHL games.

Rene Fasel, International Ice Hockey Federation president, had a point when he wrote in a recent IIHF News editorial that other sports such as soccer have a rule that forces teams to release their players for sanctioned international games, even if they are elite athletes, whenever their national teams call.

The league knew this would be a problem ever since the 1998 Nagano Olympics--when Slovakia ran into trouble trying to use NHL players in a qualifying round--but it hasn’t done anything to prevent this from being an issue.

The NHL should have stepped in because leaving the decisions up to the individual teams is not the answer.

Line Shifts

* After opening the season as one of the cockiest teams in the league, Vancouver has been humbled by a 14-21-4 start. The Canucks are on a three-game losing streak.

“We’d like to be in a better mood going into Christmas, but a lot of guys on this team need a break,” captain Markus Naslund said.

“We were a little too full of ourselves [at the beginning of the season]. We had a great season last year and thought we would make the playoffs automatically. And that’s not the case. We got a rude awakening on that one.”

* San Jose forward Mike Ricci, who has broken his nose numerous times in his career, broke it again last week against Atlanta and said he can breathe better.

“He was bleeding all game,” linemate Niklas Sundstrom said about Ricci. “I felt really bad for him. There’s not many guys as tough as him. I just kept seeing him with a bunch of towels on his face.... He just gets better looking every day.”

* Add the New York Rangers vs. New York Islanders to your-must-see rematch list along with Toronto vs. New Jersey and Calgary vs. Anaheim. After the Rangers’ Sandy McCarthy was beaten down by Eric Cairns in the Islanders’ 6-2 victory last week, McCarthy didn’t sound like the same person who taunted Cairns in November when he refused to fight because of a biceps injury.

“He’s a tough guy,” McCarthy said. “I never said he wasn’t a tough guy.”

Although Cairns downplayed his battle with McCarthy, Islander captain Michael Peca didn’t hesitate to bash his fellow Atlantic Division rivals.

“The Rangers are a team that think they can intimidate and outmuscle you,” Peca said. “We weren’t going to allow that to happen, no matter what they threw at us.” Next showdown between the teams will be Jan. 22 at Uniondale.

* Detroit, with 10 players selected to Olympic men’s hockey rosters, will have more players in Salt Lake City in February than any other NHL team.

The Red Wings’ Olympians are Sweden’s Nicklas Lidstrom, Fredrik Olausson and Tomas Holmstrom, Canada’s Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan, the United States’ Chris Chelios and Brett Hull, Russia’s Sergei Fedorov and Igor Larionov and the Czech Republic’s Dominik Hasek.

* Former coach Ivan Hlinka, fired two months ago by Pittsburgh, filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the Penguins on Friday, claiming the team owes him $854,000.

Quote of the Week

“We’re not asking him to be a physical, dominating defenseman because he never will be. But he can at least get in the way. It’s not a very complicated science.”

Florida Coach Mike Keenan talking about defenseman Jeff Norton, whom he also coached in St. Louis.