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NHL hockey games are on serious life support in the United States. There are a number of key reasons for this but it must first be realized that even in the original six team league there was very little interest in hockey outside of these markets. Inside the original cities - New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston - fan interest was such that if there were 20,000 die hard fans, the vast majority attended the games. This gave a false illusion to the prosperity of the sport in its best days. But now the worst days are upon hockey.

Television drives the success sports to the top. Hockey to the untrained eye is the worst possible sport for the casual viewer. The progression of the game is lightening fast which leaves the novice blinking at what or what did not transpire on the ice. Fox tried to remedy the situation with the illuminated puck but the vapors from a boxing puck could not slow down the speed. The puck is too small to be picked up the camera and it always disappears during a goal, only to be found after multiple replays. Further causing problems are the US announcers of hockey matches. For the most part they are completely over the top, praising the intricacies of hockey which to the veteran observer borders on ridiculous television journalism. The average novice fan is not going to get excited about back-checking as this is akin to watching a multiple pick-off move to first base in during a ball game. The terms used frequently such as "half-boards" make absolutely no sense to anybody. The announcers themselves do not know how to call a game sensibly. Somebody at the network should enlist a few Canadian announcers who do not monitor every bounce of the puck as if it were life or death but allow the game to flow along at its own speed. Canadian announcers will tell their viewers that a bad game is lulling the fans to sleep.

The players are basically Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Russian with difficult names to pronounce. Immediately after their season ends most of them disappear back to their homelands not to be heard of again until training camp. Considering the high ratio of Hispanic and African-Americans in the USA it becomes quite clear scanning the crowds that these folks are basically not interested in hockey as a spectator sport. They traditionally do not play hockey as children and there is no history to draw them into the game.

The game itself is a mess. The "trap" which nobody outside of a coach or player knows what it is, is nonetheless killing

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