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TagsBY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
LOS ANGELES – So another hockey season has been relegated to the history books but what is the real state of the game of hockey in the United States? It seems pretty good from the highest professional level down to the grass roots which probably comes as a shock to Canadian sportswriters along with American sports editors and alleged experts on sports talk radio.
Although New Jersey was shut out in the opening round of the National Hockey League entry draft, eleven Americans were picked by the 30 teams and two were California bred players. Former New Jersey Devils television analyst Peter McNab, who grew up in San Diego, noted that the "Gretzky effect" made Southern California pay attention to hockey. Wayne Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles in August 1988 and immediately blended into the celebrity culture that is Hollywood.
But more importantly for the growth of hockey, ice rinks suddenly opened and kids who might have played baseball or football ended up at rinks.
This is not to suggest that hockey from top to bottom doesn't have problems. The NHL's Phoenix Coyotes situation has not as of yet been resolved as Glendale, Ariz., city officials continue to work out an agreement with a potential buyer of the bankrupt club. The Coyotes General Manager Don Maloney was correct about the Canadian media coverage of the bankruptcy and how Toronto-based journalists were openly rooting for the franchise to become insolvent and move to the Toronto-area, specifically Hamilton. Maloney's criticism continued on draft day last Friday in LA when he said "we lived it."One day, an academic think-tank should study the entire Phoenix Coyotes financial saga which started long before there was a thought of putting an NHL team in the Phoenix and how Phoenix elected officials in their haste to please the National Basketball Association's Phoenix Suns ownership group led by Jerry Colangelo bungled the construction of a downtown arena in 1988. The city approved a concept that showcased the basketball court in a municipally paid multi-purpose arena and rendered the building useless for hockey and other events. The Coyotes franchise was doomed in the building from the first time players stepped foot onto the ice in 1996 after it was discovered that about 4,000 seats had obstructed views.
The hockey team would become the centerpiece of a proposed real estate deal in Scottsdale that would have replaced an aging mall (that fell through) and then a centerpiece for the building up of Glendale, Ariz. Glendale got the team and built the arena but the real estate deal fell apart and the money situation worsened for the team and city of Glendale.
The Valley of the Sun area has two major entertainment centers which is one too many thanks to poor political judgment by elected officials in Phoenix and Glendale. Arizona politicians have made quite a few poor sports financing decisions since the 1986 Tax Act which changed financial rules for municipal stadium and arena funding (revenues that went to pay off debt at stadiums and arenas were capped at eight cents on every dollar earned in the facility) as the agency in charge of funding the numerous Spring Training facilities that have sprung up around Phoenix is tapped out and all the new facilities have left Tucson in the dust as there will be no Major League Baseball clubs training in the city but the Phoenix area will house 15 clubs.
The New York Islanders saga continues to play out with team owner Charles Wang wanting to build an arena-village around a rebuilt Nassau Coliseum and Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray sitting on her hands apparently waiting for former Hempstead Town Supervisor and New York Senator Alphonse D'Amato to give her the go ahead to approve Wang's Lighthouse Project. Wang might have a fallback option in Queens or possibly play Islanders games in Brooklyn if the Bruce Ratner Nets basketball building is ever constructed.
The National Hockey League Players Association may restructure itself and give power to a new Executive Director but that is a players matter that only the players and their agents can address.
On the minor pro level, the economy has apparently claimed three International Hockey League teams in hard-hit Michigan, Port Huron, Flint and Muskegon. The IHL's loss is American junior hockey's gain as the United States Hockey League has accepted the Michigan city into the fold and that gives American teenagers who excel in hockey another opportunity to play on a high level in the states. It also gives gifted Canadians an opportunity to play in a high level environment aside from Canadian juniors if they decide they want a scholarship to play hockey in an American University since the NCAA will not allow Canadian Junior A players to play for American colleges.
The paradox in hockey today is that Americans in non-transitional hockey areas (Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are considered "traditional") like California are coming on board while the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey boss Brian Burke cannot figure out why Toronto-area politicians are not investing money to build and upgrade recreational ice rinks and that is a big problem as Toronto is supposed to be the hockey "capital" (at least in the Toronto sports writers minds) of North America.
Burke also suggests that more inline skating leagues should be available for kids growing up to get them involved with the game.
But that is just fine according to Dave Ogrean, the Executive Director of USA Hockey. National Hockey League expansion from 1967 through 2000 has had a domino effect. Mike Richter, the goaltender of the 1994 New York Rangers Stanley Cup team, is a product of Philadelphia-South Jersey youth hockey. Jim Dowd, who was the first New Jersey player to be on a Stanley Cup team with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, is from Brick.
Ogrean is not worried about Burke and the Toronto problems. He wants to make sure that Americans have an opportunity to play.
"You can go to probably a three rink complex in suburban Phoenix, or suburban Dallas or suburban Tampa and play hockey year round," said Ogrean. "We have a lot of players and as a matter of fact that's (Dallas), a classic example of a great relationship between an NHL team and a community because so many of those rinks, the Star Centers, were put up by the Dallas Stars. They are largely responsible for catalyzing a high school hockey league in the Metroplex area that didn't even exist 20 years ago and now there are now over 70 high school teams in Texas playing varsity hockey.
"The Sun Belt states are where the population is moving, where the economy is healthier and you have NHL teams in all of those markets now. So it is picking up. Keep in mind (New England, New York and New Jersey), when you are in those areas, you are talking about areas that already have a fairly high saturation level, there is not a lot of new rinks being built, we are not losing any rinks but there are not a lot of new rinks being built. But the numbers are up fractionally in almost every part of the United States in terms of participation."
There are two "major" United States junior leagues, the United States Hockey League and North American Hockey League. The USHL is the best league. There are a number of American-based teams in Canadian Juniors, including Seattle, Portland, Spokane and the Tri-City area of Washington that includes Kennewick in the Western Hockey League. Plymouth, Michigan, Erie, Pennsylvania and Saginaw, Michigan also have Ontario Hockey League franchises. For most Canadian kids, the Juniors leagues are the quickest way to become pros. But in the United States, there are a variety of ways to get training including high school hockey and travel leagues.
"The path in Canada is simply a lot more linear," said Ogrean. "There are fewer options and fewer branches on the tree. The USHL is the only Tier I league in America, the NAHL is the only Tier II league in America, all other junior leagues are Tier III at various levels. The big difference is if you are playing Tier I or Tier II hockey, you are basically scholarshiped. When you are playing Tier III hockey, it is pay to play."
It is very unlikely that the USHL will ever set up shop in the New York City or Philadelphia markets. The USHL is a Michigan-Illinois-Wisconsin-Ohio-Minnesota-Iowa-North and South Dakota bus league.
"It is not national and one of the big questions there are always dealing with is how do you expand?" said Ogrean. "You get too far away from being a bus league and the economics start breaking down. What we want to see is hockey at any level to be successful. I think the leagues, the owners, the commissioners can make the best decisions from the business standpoint what is best for them."
The business of hockey is rather complex even though it is a simple game that is played on ice.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Keep up the good work Evan