by Edward Poitras

Created on: March 09, 2010

At a place in time where the typical American sports fan demands to be entertained, the sport of ice hockey has been unable to capitalize on its various outlets to promote the sport.  From the NHL to the Olympics, from the NCAA’s to the World Junior Championships (has the average hockey fan even heard of the World Juniors?), the opportunities for the sport to garner more attention than Seinfeld reruns have always been prevalent.  Then why does hockey find itself fighting over the No. 4 slot of major sports in the U.S. with suddenly fashionable futbol?  I mean soccer?  The answer to this question is much more complex than the simple arguments of, “hockey is too low scoring”, or “I can’t follow the puck”.  Although both variables are valid, it takes a bit more tweaking to balance this equation.

As a die-hard hockey fan, I’ve been blessed to grow up and live in one of the few cities in the U.S. to be considered a hockey hotbed, Boston.  Labeling Boston a hotbed of hockey does not mean that it’s Boston’s most popular sport, far from it.  Hockey is still buried behind the cult following known as the Boston Red Sox, the Dynasty of the New England Patriots, and lucky to be considered on even ground as the Boston Celtics.  The Bruins produce roughly the same print media attention as the Lightning do in Tampa, and you would be hard pressed to find the Bruins as the main topic of Boston sports radio, in late February.  So how is it that in a hockey hotbed, sports fans for the most part couldn’t care less about the game?    

I’ve heard that there was a time when the Boston Bruins dominated the Boston sports landscape.  Back in 1970, a young man from Parry Sound, Ontario, catapulted the Bruins into the hottest ticket in town when he burst through the air after scoring the Stanley Cup clinching overtime goal on a Sunday afternoon in early May.  By working a give and go pass with Derek Sanderson to perfection, Bobby Orr would change the perception of hockey in Boston forever from, “the only sport they play up in Canada”, to “hockey is awesome!”  Two years and another Stanley Cup later, the “Big Bad Bruins” had taken over the town in a manner befitting of the Beatles.  Hockey was the most popular sport, at least in one large market for a short time.

Of course a team’s success goes hand in

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