doesnt it just seem like people who are big college football fans would be big NFL fans

and people who are big college basketball fans would be big NBA fans?

obviously thats not the case, you dont have to convince me, it just doesnt make sense

ps: the NFL is the biggest thug league out there, but the NBA seems to take the blame

but anyway, seeing that this thread is about hockey, i'll leave it at that

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 8:56 PM. Reason : .]

5/24/2007 8:47:16 PM

i've never really liked any professional sports, until i went to hurricanes games

and that's all I really enjoy

but i'll watch college football and basketball like crazy

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 8:59 PM. Reason : ]

5/24/2007 8:59:00 PM

yeah a lot of it is what you've seen yourself

i was fortunate enough to go to a lot of hornets games when they were in charlotte and nowadays i get to a lot of bobcats and panthers games and i clearly like the nfl and nba as my 2 favorite pro sports

5/24/2007 9:15:38 PM

i mean i've been to panthers games too, but i've just never really got into it a lot

5/24/2007 9:36:36 PM

Ive been to a couple panthers games, and once I was like 3 rows from the very top of the stadium, the players looked about as big as the letters on your screen...that sucked, Ill take TV over paying money for that.

5/24/2007 9:51:17 PM

can we also agree that NBC doesn't do a damn bit of marketing for the NHL, and the fact that sportcenter BURIES hockey in every broadcast doesn't help?

5/24/2007 10:20:41 PM

^yea, NBC sucks balls for promotion.

And dont even get me started on sportscenter. They have their anchors spend about 20 minutes minimum on NBA playoffs then they are like "lets call in Barry Melrose for hockey highlights"(because they apparently do not know enough hockey to do it themselves). Then Barry comes on there with his awful hair and narrates about 45 seconds worth of hockey clips then they say "Hockey Night is brought to you by.....". I dont get it, its not "hockey night", they just showed 45 seconds worth, and had to bring in fucking Barry Melrose to do it.

5/24/2007 10:25:43 PM

putting it behind the nba playoffs is ok with me, b/c i understand that the NBA is more popular. What fucking kills me is putting the conference finals after fucking Rangers-Royals "highlights."

5/24/2007 10:27:35 PM

Quote :

"can we also agree that NBC doesn't do a damn bit of marketing for the NHL, and the fact that sportcenter BURIES hockey in every broadcast doesn't help?"

This pisses me off more than anything. The NHL FINALLY came up with some cool advertisements this year (the hotel room antics, the "Swedish Twins" one, etc), but they only air the ads DURING games. Duhhrrr

As for the Sportscenter thing; that is a bit annoying too, but I pretty much stopped watching it a year or two ago so I don't even really notice it. Here is an interesting article on that: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=schreiber_leanne&id=2866241

"It's no wonder the most common category of complaint I receive as ESPN ombudsman is about perceived conflicts of interest. Hockey fans complain about the diminished presence of hockey on "SportsCenter" since ESPN dropped rights to game coverage in 2005"


Back to the whole non-northerners as hockey fans thing. I grew up just outside of Charlotte and have lived there my entire life until I moved to Raleigh. I was a big Hornets fan when I was a kid, but stopped caring about basketball pretty much completely as guys like Johnson, Mourning, Mugsy, and Curry left the team. When the Panthers came I slowly became a huge NFL fan, and football is still my second favorite sport. I got into college basketball when I came to State.

As for hockey, I picked up NHL 94 for the Super Nintendo on sale at Target for like $5 in 1996. This is how I learned the rules to the sport (in fact, this is how I learned the rules to most sports). At the trade deadline, Wayne Gretzky got traded to the Blues. I knew very little about hockey, but knew enough to know that Wayne Gretzky and Brett Hull playing together was something special. The Red Wings/Blues series that year (where Yzerman won it with that famous shot from the blue line) hooked me on hockey forever. I became a Red Wings fan (although you won't see me saying that around here that much), and then the Whalers moved down a year later and I cheered for the Wings in the West and Canes in the East until 02 when the Wings completely betrayed me by beating Carolina. I completely discovered hockey on my own with no influences from friends or family, and certainly no influences by location (other than going to Charlotte Checkers games going up). I simply watched it on TV and fairly quickly realized that it was the most entertaining sport to me.

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 10:41 PM. Reason : .]

5/24/2007 10:39:51 PM

^sounds pretty much about like my story

minus the NBA part


i lived in pinehurst growing up, never moved.

picked up some NHL game, don't remember what year or what system, liked it, saw it on ESPN a few times, and slowly started watching when i saw it on

5/24/2007 11:12:40 PM

I always followed hockey a little but really became a huge fan when the canes moved to Carolina.

Went to the inaugural home game against the Pens and a bunch of games (playoffs against the Bruins) in greensboro and then chose NC State so i could go to more Canes games. Used to go to 10-15 games a year and waffle between sitting on the ice, midlevel, and nosebleeds. Met some of the guys a few times, read hockeyboards religiously, even kept up with the farm system and all that garbage.

Then the strike came and i cant recall watching more than 3-4 games ever since. Didnt even get excited when the canes won the cup.

Even cut up my Canes Mastercard because i got so sick of merchants talking about the Canes whenever id use it.


And of course ESPN doesnt pump up the NHL. They fucked them out of millions of dollars during the lockout. They still had to pay for the TV deal even though there were no games to broadcast.

5/24/2007 11:27:12 PM

It's not ESPN's job to promote the NHL though. That's Bettman's job and that is his main downfall as the comish IMO. There is awesome talent in the league right now. Guys like Crosby, Ovechkin, Heatly, Iginla, Selanne, etc should be household names along with NFL MLB NBA stars but they're not. Stuff like that happens when you move the all-star game to a wednesday night on versus instead of putting it on NBC on a Sunday afternoon.

Not to mention he's messing with things that don't need to be messed with (uniforms, crackdown on fighting, shootouts, etc) to try and appease to the casual fan and not the hardcore fan.

Another thing, Hockey is amplified tenfold in person. It's a live sport. The experience is a hundred times better at the rink then on TV. NFL and NBA games are cool to go to as well, but have been perfected on TV to where you get just as good an experience from watching it at home to being in the 500 level at Bank of America stadium. Again, just my opinion Teams should work in whatever ways they can to get more fans in the building.

Okay, so I was kind of all over the place with that, but I'm tired, so night night

5/25/2007 12:29:08 AM

Quote :

"Then the strike came and i cant recall watching more than 3-4 games ever since. Didnt even get excited when the canes won the cup. Even cut up my Canes Mastercard because i got so sick of merchants talking about the Canes whenever id use it."

???

5/25/2007 2:33:00 AM

Yeah hockey is totally a sport were most people follow a team, if there on then you watch. If there not on then you don't watch. Yes there are a few diehard fans that watch any game on but those are few and far between. Most sports have casual fans that will watch even though they may not be fans of either team.

In addition, them not having NHL Hockey Night on ESPN has hurt a lot. When I was 16 or 17 that shit was on like 2 or 3 nights a week and often double headers (east game then a west game). A lot of times nothing else was on so I started following hockey.

5/25/2007 2:49:12 AM

In '02-03 and '03-04, when the Canes missed the playoffs, I was living in the dorms. I got two TVs so I could watch both televised playoff games at once. Four games a night = good times.

5/25/2007 2:54:19 AM

Hockey isnt bad as a sport. I personally dont find the fact that they wear no facemask and get hit with pucks on occassion to elevate it to the most physical sport around level. Sure they run into each other but they have shoulder pads and do it within reason 99% of the time. I've been to a few games and it didnt seem to make the game any more magical.

In summary:

Lets go rangers!

5/25/2007 6:22:11 AM

It's not about not wearing a shield and occasionally taking a puck in the eye.

It's about taking a puck in the eye and having the trainer hold it open so that it doesn't swell shut, not missing a single shift, and then scoring the game-winning goal in overtime before getting any medical attention.

It's about breaking your wrist while blocking a shot and not missing a shift.

It's about taking a shot in the ankle so hard that you can hardly stand on it, then blocking another shot with the same ankle ten seconds later.

That's what makes it magical.

5/25/2007 6:53:37 AM

Quote :

"Sure they run into each other but they have shoulder pads"

lots of them (brendan shanahan for example) wear tiny shoulder pads that offer minimal protection. he's had his since the 80's i think. you'd get better protection with football pads. so in short, i'd like to see you get out there and take those hits at that speed and still stand up afterwards and say it doesn't hurt.

5/25/2007 10:43:50 AM