Morning Skate: Ideas

Tuesday! It’s the second day of the week. Thanks for reading.

At this point in the offseason, I’m struggling with Morning Skate topics, so bear with me.

The Bruins are just about done with their business, the rest of the NHL is quiet...the World Juniors are rolling on, but that’s about it.

I actually kind of like this period of the offseason, because there’s no real expectation of anything happening - it’s the true “down” time.

One of the buzzy happenings in NHL circles late last week was the fact that the NHL had the lowest All-Star Game viewership numbers of the major men’s American pro leagues:

There were many Tweets and comments to the effect of “this is because the NHL does a bad job marketing its stars,” but I think it’s more a case of the NHL All-Star game being boring.

I guess I can see the argument of “casual sports fans won’t tune in because they don’t know the big names,” but it’s more likely that hardcore hockey fans know the game is a farce and don’t plan their weekends around it.

I’d also be curious to know if those numbers take the “weekend” aspect into consideration - I’d be willing to bet a lot more hockey fans tune into the Skills Competition than the game itself.

Anyways, something else for us to argue about...

Today’s discussion topic

...so argue!

Do you find the NHL’s place in the North American pro sports landscape concerning? Or can the league get along just fine as a sort of “niche” league?