F#¢& hockey talking heads

Sidney Crosby returned to the Penguins line up last night.  Analysts comments about this just infuriate me.

First let me get this out of the way.  Crosby is a hell of a player.  Right now, without playing a single game more I consider him a borderline hall of famer.  Give him just another 5 full seasons and he is a HoF lock.  In fact his half of a 2010-2011 campaign was Gretzky-like.

You see Gretzky didn't just win scoring titles.  He dominated the race, beating the next closest routinely by 50 points.  With the exception of 2010-2011 Sid has been very very good, but not a generational player.

Now I don't want to beat up Crosby too bad, so I restate he is a hell of a player.  His stat lines remind me of Joe Sakic, and Sakic is one of my all time favorites.  But neither of them are Hockey Jesus.

Tell that too the analysts.  There seems to be an assumption that Crosby and Ovechkin are single handedly responsible for the NHL's resurgance post lockout.  Now I am willing to give them some credit, but no more than any young dynamic player deserves.  Malkin, the Sedins, Toews, Kane, Datsyuk, Stamkos, Gaborik and many many others all deserve a pat on the back here.

Hockey declined in the late 90s because it was a boring product.  There was a perfect storm of factors here.

1) The Neutral Zone Trap - by itself NZT isn't awful.  The first year the Devil's implemented this, '93-94, they were 2nd in the league with scoring, tallying 306 goals.  No the NZT was not inherently evil, but the adoption of the trap by 2/3's of the NHL led to a bad product.

2) Expansion - 1991-2000 saw the league expand from 21 teams to 30.  Expansion is always hard on the team coming into the league, their rosters are filled with guys lucky to have jobs in the NHL.  That talent dilution, or better to say talent inequity, also directly led to a bad product.

3) Refereeing the game - this was absolutely the biggest problem in the NHL.  Not blown calls, but the lack of calls. Tackle Hockey.  To be fair, the NHL was aware of this and tried some crack downs, only to have them lapse especially in the playoffs.  The single most impressive thing that happened coming out of the lockout in 2005-2006, was that the obstruction penalties were called throughout the season AND the playoffs.  

So some teams still trap, but not the majority.  The league hasn't expanded in a decade.  And the obstruction rules are actually enforced.

I've been closely following hockey for 20 years now.  In that time the NHL has always tried to promote their stars.  First Gretzky and Lemieux.  It moved to Jagr and Lindros.  Now its onto Crosby and Ovechkin.  The popularity of the sport has nothing to do with that marketing strategy, it has everything to do with the product on display.