Move Over NBA: New Hockey Fan Here

For most of my life, I've been a three-sport fan: football, basketball and baseball. Growing up in New England, hockey was part of life, just not mine. Aside from the occasional pickup game with friends on the town pond, or the summer street hockey games in neighborhood driveways, my attention focused on the NFL, NBA and MLB. Recently, however, my perception has changed.

Prior to the Vancouver Olympics, my last memory of watching a hockey game on television was the 1988 Stanley Cup Finals. I remember lying sprawled out across my living room floor as Ray Bourque and the Boston Bruins took on the great Wayne Gretzky and his Edmonton Oilers. If you don't remember, the fourth game of that series was suspended as the lights went out in the Boston Garden. I don't remember why, but the lights went out on my hockey fandom around the same time.

Perhaps it was the emergence of Michael Jordan or the epic dunk contests between him and Dominique Wilkins. Whatever the reason, I became an NBA fan and my interest in hockey disappeared. Now 20 years later, I wish I hadn't made the switch. As much as I love basketball, the NBA is a superstar league. The best teams all have one superstar and a supporting cast. The Lakers have Kobe Bryant, the Magic have Dwight Howard and of course the Cavaliers have Lebron James. Gone are the days of team basketball. Instead, teams take turns running isolation plays for their best players, and the only excitement comes when a player approaches 50 points in a game.

I have to admit that hockey is not an easy game to follow on television. Prior to the days of high definition television, attempting to follow a puck up and down the ice, which frequently disappeared behind the camera-side boards was nearly impossible. Yet, with advancements in technology and new rules aimed at speeding up the game, hockey has made its way back into my heart.

Unlike basketball games or marathon baseball broadcasts, hockey is fast-paced and keeps me on the edge of my seat for 60 minutes. I've heard some complain about two intermissions, but frankly as a fan, my heart needs the rest. The fact is that no matter where the puck is on the ice, it is just a few seconds away from finding the back of the net. There may be no other sport in America that creates such a high level of excitement and anticipation for the viewer.

After a two-decade hiatus, hockey has won me back, but there are plenty of fans still missing out on the action. The problem lies primarily in hockey's broadcast strategy. Unless you live in an area where the local team has a television contract, then games are hard to come by. If you live outside the viewing area of your favorite team, you're pretty much out of luck, unless you're willing to shell out a couple of hundred dollars to order the NHL pay-per-view package. Simply put, hockey needs to bring back fans, by putting its product back on television. If they do, maybe more fans, like me, will jump on the hockey bandwagon; or would that be zamboni?