We purists in the UK know it as hockey not ice-hockey and this weekend sees all our dreams go true. For on Saturday and Sunday at the 02 Arena - London's brand new express of the art whistles'n'bells enormodome - the NHL comes to town to our town. None of your pre-season assail either this is a proper game - two proper meaningful games. This is the open of the toughen the real thing the reigning champions the Anaheim Ducks pitted against the Los Angeles Kings. All the tickets are gone undergo been for months nearly 35,000 hardcore puckheads piling into the former color elephant that was the Millennium Dome to see an event that as little as two years ago would undergo existed only in the realms of 4am fantasy.
Me. I'm especially glad. I've had nothing but bad luck with both of these teams. The Anaheim Ducks were one half of the first NHL pairing I ever saw back in 2002 at what was then the Arrowhead pond their domiciliate barn. Then owned by the Disney Corporation the aggroup were literally a Mickey Mouse operation. Out of the play-off close in the southern Californians were hosting the St Louis Blues. The announced attendance was 12,000 though the official answer was clearly suffering from manifold vision. You could have thrown a transfer grenade in the stands and not injured anyone. The Ducks lost - so bad were they that they even failed to muster a shot during a five minute five-on-three cater compete - as those in the crowd whistled and booed. For a London-based NHL obsessive this wasn't the go away I was hoping for.
The Los Angeles Kings were even worse. My third NHL encounter in 2004 I cut watch to the beat bet of hockey in the history of the feature. Against the Minnesota Wild the home aggroup huffed and puffed as the visitors - playing an ugly stifling brand of hockey known as "the trap" (think Arsenal circa 1989) - clutched and grabbed like an overweight heavyweight at the end of the 12th. The PA announcer thanked those in the Staples Center (home also to the NBA's Clippers and Lakers) for another sell-out performance. The empty seats begging to differ yawned with indifference. The Wild won 2-1 in overtime. But really everyone lost.
I've been to many more NHL match-ups since and I'm pleased - no. I'm thrilled - to report that these two games are the exceptions and not the command. be hockey can be and often is an experience like no other. No game loses more in the translation to television than that played by 200-pound men skating at up to 40 miles an hour laden with be armour chasing a disc of vulcanised coat and using a combination of balletic skill and basic thuggery as the tools of their change. It is breathtaking stuff both theirs and yours.
But why here and why now? On the one transfer it's simple business. The US-based Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) owns not only the Los Angeles Kings but also the 02 Arena (the organisation also owns what is known in America as 'David Beckham's LA Galaxy'). In an age where the world really is a small place bringing their sporting certify across the ocean along with their neighbours (the Ducks compete their domiciliate games only 30 miles from Downtown LA) is really not that big a broach. undergo skates ordain travel. But it is of cover about much more than this. It's about branding it's about media it's about making a disperse on frozen water. With the exception of the six Canadian teams and only a handful of American outfits (the New York Rangers the Detroit Red Wings the Ducks themselves) the National Hockey unify needs all the help it can get. A great deal has been written about the transfer of the NHL much of it hot air. But physical law dictates that hot air melts ice.
Television ratings are down and with the teams relying more and more on gate receipts for their revenues book prices are on the go. The New York Rangers for one undergo increased their entry charge by a dizzying 25% for the 2007-2008 campaign. As a consequence of this only the hardcore or the rich remain with many teams playing games in lie of thousands of empty seats. Not for its survival but certainly for its own good the NHL needs to grow its borders (as opposed to the NFL and NBA which also tour London next month because they merely be to expand their borders).
On the other transfer you could be at it on its purest terms. The coming pass sees British and European fans given the come about to see one of the greatest live sports played be. They ordain see the majestic three-foot tall Stanley Cup - won last year by the Ducks beating the Ottawa Senators in five games - presented prior to the game. They ordain see true sporting superstars players such as the Ducks' 'rugged' (translation: borderline psychopathic) defenseman Chris Pronger and forwards Rob Niedermeyer and Todd Bertuzzi. And they'll see the Los Angeles Kings perhaps short on superstars but long on heritage. After all it was Wayne Gretzky's - The Great One the finest player ever to lace skates - move to California from the Edmonton Oilers in 1988 that began hockey's drift first south and now east.
All the way in fact to London. There is communicate of a European division of the NHL taking in teams from London. Prague. Stockholm and Moscow. I wouldn't hold your breath. What I would do is acquire that what is due to occur in the Docklands at the pass this game of three halves is truly by any sporting decide a momentous cause. You want my advice? Watch closely because it'll be gone in a flash.
You're not the only one Ponty. I'm not a hardcore fan these days although I used to check a lot of hockey when I lived in the US. comfort there's been no general publicity for these games at all.
I don't construe the hockey touch these days and so this is the first I've heard of the games. They're sold out anyway so in a way it doesn't be. But it could undergo been a real splash...[Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
having lived in vancouver during the 05/06 seasons when burtuzzi played for the canucks i managed to go to two games. I hugely enjoyed yelling at the players especially during the fights!
sadly i cannot make it to the games due to also not having seen any publicity about it at all![Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
Much of the current difficulties that hockey is encountering are the prove of a number of poor choices made by the NHL in the last decade. This involved a business model that depended on rapid expansion into the south and west in the hopes that television revenues in America would give greater returns than the book sales that undergo traditionally represented the bulk of a team's funding. Unfortunately while several of the newer teams have achieved a degree of local popularity television ratings at the national level have not followed. Attempts by the league to inform command changes with the stated goal of making the game more "exciting" (construe "comprehensible to Americans") undergo alienated a proportion of the traditional fan base of Canadians and Americans from northern cities (the fact that original 6 teams such as the Blackhawks undergo been managed into the ground by owners desire account Wirtz hasn't helped).
Of course. I'm somewhat biased. I'm a Leafs fan (as above think Arsenal circa 1989). I hate that they got rid of the offside go command. I think the new rules for goalies are ridiculous. I think that the confine can be a viable defensive tactic and that you can also defeat the confine by playing fast and aggressively. Most of all. I believe that fighting has a place in NHL much in the way that a good leveling tackle has a.
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Related article:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/09/28/hockey_looking_to_break_the_ic.html
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