ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606090021
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ON THE AIR
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
This year's Stanley Cup Finals may be short, but they're sweet to the National Hockey League and beyond.
``A bunch of guys from the outside are talking about how these finals have two cities that haven't been there before or weren't supposed to be there, so maybe it's not so attractive,'' said former goalie John Davidson, the Fox Network's NHL broadcast analyst. ``What I see are two more marketplaces, Denver and Miami, that are energized by the sport.
``The Colorado-Florida series is just an extension of what's been happening on skates, and it's wonderful. Look at the in-line skating, how that's taken off. The minor leagues have boomed in most places. It's a great sport. A lot of that is perception, and the perception of hockey has changed, or been changed.''
Davidson and play-by-play man Mike Emrick will call Game 3 of the Avalanche-Panthers series today at Miami Arena (8 p.m., WJPR/WFXR Channels 21/27), and it figures to be Fox's last game of its second NHL season. Fox won't have another Stanley Cup game unless the series goes to Game 7 - and with Colorado up 2-0, that isn't likely.
No matter, Davidson says of the first Stanley Cup series matching two first-time entrants since 1914. More than the rising Nielsen ratings tell Davidson, who played eight of his 10 NHL seasons with the New York Rangers, that the sport finally has been accepted south of the border of his native Canada.
``Hockey always was the easiest sport to take a shot at, and the sport didn't help itself,'' Davidson said. ``You'd watch the sports highlights and you'd see all of the fights. Hockey also didn't know how to market itself. My take on what's happened is that the Gary Bettman regime has changed how people look at hockey.
``Since he's become commissioner, the league has cleaned up. It's still a rough game. It can be very violent, but there's less of that. Now you turn on the TV and you don't see the fights on the highlights or lowlights or whatever you wanted to call them.''
Davidson lauds ESPN, which has the bulk of the U.S. coverage of the NHL, as well as Fox, for helping hockey. ``They helped get the sport into the '90s,'' he said. ``Some people talk about the ratings and say they're still low, and the point is they're improving. It's a process. It takes time. Look at the NBA.''
Davidson recalls his days in the late '70s as the Rangers' goalie, years when he read about the NBA struggling for survival.
``Now, basketball is in the stratosphere, as it deserves to be with what it's done,'' he said. ``Well, hockey is far behind, but I'd put hockey against anybody else. Yes, even the NFL. Once more people in this country started to understand the game, it was only a matter of time before it grew.''
Some numbers to back up that opinion: Game 7 of the Florida-Pittsburgh conference finals series June 15 on ESPN was the most watched cable TV program last week, viewed in 2.62 million homes. The 2.7 rating, however, equates to about one-seventh the number of viewers for Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night between the Chicago Bulls and the Seattle SuperSonics.
The Fox analyst does remain amazed at the ice interest mushrooming in the South, a boom led by the playoff exposure for the Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning, although Atlanta has lost its International Hockey League club to Quebec City, where the transplanted Avalanche was known as the Nordiques.
``My old buddy from the Rangers, Eddie Johnstone, is coaching in Mobile in the East Coast [Hockey] League,'' Davidson said. ``He's staying down there all summer to run camps and they're filled. Who'd have ever figured hockey would be like that in Mobile?''
Davidson's take on the IHL's battle with the NHL and American Hockey League for some markets is a positive. ``It makes the sport a better product, putting teams into markets without hockey,'' he said. However, the migration of Canadian clubs to the United States - the Avalanche and the recent shift of Winnipeg to Phoenix - ``is a gigantic issue,'' Davidson said.
``The exchange rate [on the dollar] is 35 to 40 percent different,'' said Davidson, an Ottawa native who grew up in Calgary and now lives in New York. ``Even the weather is a factor. If you're a 19-year-old kid, would you want to play in the frozen North as opposed to somewhere like Florida?
``I think the incentive program the NHL has put in is going to work. If a club markets itself to the best of its ability and improves its arena and so forth, the league has an assistance program [limited revenue sharing] to help out. Edmonton and Calgary have done that. Vancouver and Montreal have new buildings. Toronto has an old, decrepit place [historic Maple Leaf Gardens] that should be bombed. Truly. I can say that, because I'm not from Toronto.''
While Davidson sees the NHL solidifying its remaining Canadian franchises, he sees only growth for the league and the sport in U.S. markets.
``Hartford is the only exception,'' he said. ``There are problems there to be worked out. I see the league going next to the Pacific Northwest, maybe Portland. Nashville is a natural, of course, and I think the NHL would love to get back into the Twin Cities.
``There's talk about Atlanta and the Carolinas and Houston, and perhaps even a franchise in Ohio, not so much Cleveland, but more so the Columbus area. I think the NHL's main idea right now is to keep strong the franchises it has before looking ahead.''
Davidson is right. About the only skating backward you see in hockey these days is on the ice.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Davidsonby CNB