Six years after a full season was lost, the NHL finds itself in a unique position of negotiated calm and unprecedented success. The NHL will never enjoy the revenue streams the NFL produces, but the little brother league can relate to the uncertainty that threatens upcoming American football and basketball games.
The NHL certainly likes its current view, far away from the storm.
As it takes the midseason spectacle to Raleigh for the first time, the NHL said it was on pace to break revenue records. The league expects total revenue to rise for the fifth straight year to nearly $2.9 billion.
League-generated revenue was believed to be going up by 14 percent — an 85 percent jump over the past four years.
“The league is extremely well positioned,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “The vital signs are good and we anticipate continued growth and momentum. The strong numbers are a testament to a great product on the ice, a growing fan base that loves our game, and a strategy that provided a path for corporate America to reach that fan base.” And now the NHL is pushing the envelope.
While the league and All-Star game will take a big hit because Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby — the face of the league and its most popular player — is out with a concussion, at least there is another hook to draw people in.
Aside from taking the All-Star game outside — a la the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day — it is hard to envision a more radical change to the format that seemingly worked for years. This year’s teams will be chosen by a televised draft on Friday.
“You look around the leagues, the concept is pretty much the same: Voted in or picked by fans or hockey personnel,” Phoenix Coyotes defenseman Ed Jovanovski said. “I’d say this caught people probably 90 percent off-guard.” Brendan Shanahan is proving to be every bit as creative an executive as he was in building a Hall of Fame-caliber playing career. The eight-time All-Star, now the NHL’s vice president of hockey and business development, worked with the league and the players’ association to develop a plan that fans could relate to even more than the All-Stars themselves.
Instead of dividing the players by conference or nationality, both tried and true methods, the All-Star teams won’t be set until the captains make their picks.
This is where fantasy meets reality. The draft is such an interesting concept, the NHL is running the risk that it will overshadow the game.
Eric Staal of the host Carolina Hurricanes will serve as captain of the aptly named “Team Staal,” and along with his alternate captains — Washington defenseman Mike Green and Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler — will stage a draft against Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom and his assistants Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Patrick Kane of Chicago on “Team Lidstrom.” One by one, All-Stars will be plucked off the board until both squads are set for Saturday’s skills competition and Sunday’s game — the first since 2009 after a one-year hiatus created by the Vancouver Olympics.
Will the draft split up the Vancouver Canucks’ Sedin twins, who have always played together? Will Staal pick his younger brother, Marc, a New York Rangers defenseman, or goalie Cam Ward — a teammate on the Hurricanes? Eric Staal has already gotten pressure from his mother to choose Marc, and the Staals will be in town for a big family reunion.
Ward is putting on the heat, too, on his own behalf.
“It’d be fun if Eric and I could be on the same team so the home fans could have one team to be cheering for,” Ward said. “But hey, if it happens and I go to Team Lidstrom, then I’ve got to shut down Staaler. I might hold it against him that he didn’t pick me.” Don’t think that Lidstrom hasn’t thought of that. As the only representative from Detroit in the game, Lidstrom will be looking for any allies he can get.
“I know he wants Cam on his team, being in front of the home crowd and everything,” Lidstrom said of Staal. “It might be a good strategy to take him and maybe take the crowd out of it and get the crowd on our side a little bit.
But that’s another thing that we’ll have fun with.”
