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Problems for Hockey that hold it down:
-- You can't see the puck on TV. The author in the linked article defends that you don't need to, but that's kinda goofy, and also pretty telling that he isn't saying "yes you can," he admits it is a problem even if he claims that it shouldn't keep you from liking hockey. Not being able to see the ball in any other sport is an immediate crisis.
-- It's freakishly expensive for kids in the USA. Travel team hockey costs around $7-15k/yr and some higher than $20k. That's crazy numbers. Competitive youth golf is cheaper than that. That's getting into "cost to keep a horse" territory in a lot of places. While travel teams are a problem in all sports, the rest of the big team sports in America still have a viable path for a kid who joins rec league teams and then makes the high school team. In hockey there's very little pipeline to the NHL other than through elite youth programs. It's a rich kid sport.
-- The population center of gravity in the US keeps shifting south, and even the northeast has had mild winters preventing ponds from freezing to safe levels in recent years, so nobody is playing hockey outside the way it was meant to be played.
Not being able to see the puck to me is a weird complaint although I guess it might be valid for people not used to hockey. It's not so much that nuh-huh, you can see it, but that with a bit of awareness of the game and a decent sportscast, it's obvious where the puck is whether you see it or not. The player with the puck moves differently, other players move differently with regards to him and the camera usually follows the puck.
Sure, but at that point I'm not really watching the game of Hockey, I'm watching the reactions of the players to the game of Hockey. Yes, I can pretty much follow who has possession of the puck, but I can't really see the puck being shot or going into the net in real time. For Larkin's goal against Slovakia I can't process the movement of the puck during the shot to know whether the shot went in or not prior to seeing the player reactions. I don't actually know what is going on if the broadcast cut off before the reaction. Where I can see that Devonta Smith caught the dagger, or a VJ Edgecome put back, or a penalty kick. I suppose if I spent 10,000 hours watching hockey, I might acquire the perception "at the level of baseline skill" to pick up the puck going into the net, but like, why? To impress rich kid Canadians?
Due to the pace of hockey, one pretty much has to be glued to the screen to get anything out of it in real time. I have to be watching and focusing to perceive what's going on, not chatting with guests or cooking dinner. Where baseball and football (both, in their own unique ways) are so slow that I can mostly just look up every now and then and not miss anything important; and also enjoy them audio only, where hockey audio just sounds like a random listing of mixed English and slavic names.
I actually think one of the downsides, or overapplications, of instant replay has been that increasingly I can't see live whether something is a "catch" or a "foul ball" or a "goaltend." Instant replay should mostly be for situations where the ref had a bad angle on it and the whole world can see he was wrong, not for Zapruder film style breakdowns looking for whether a single toe touched the line, or talmudic interpretations of what constitutes a "football move."
FWIW, I don't think the problem of the inferior product being more watchable is limited to hockey. MMA, depending on the meta of the time and styles making fights, has often suffered from lay'n'pray championship bouts that were like watching paint dry; while undercard fights between two bar bums can be exciting as hell. March Madness is a strictly superior entertainment product to the NBA, pound for pound, despite the fact that even a poverty franchise like the Sacramento Kings would rip through every college team like butter.
I'll put in a "nuh-uh" on that -- maybe only Canadians can see the puck? Certainly you lose track of it at times when they're fighting for it in the corners or whatnot, but out in the open being passed or shot it's just, like -- not hard to see? Easier than, say, a baseball in flight I'd say?
The "i know where the puck is even if I can't see it" thing is not that you never see it -- it's that you know where it is, so when it pops out onto open ice that's where you're looking. Maybe your TV is too big?
Watching that goal, I see him shoot it, I track it briefly in flight, I don't really see it going in just bouncing out after. Absent the commentary and player reactions, they could just keep playing and I'd assume it didn't go in. In baseball I can easily track flyballs, so a lot of it is probably that baseline skill/experience issue. But that does serve to make the game less accessible, for the vast majority of people who aren't already hockey fans or former players.
Sick final though. Trading two teeth for the gold medal in OT is legendary.
I'm watching it right now -- yes I know what happens, I'm watching it anyways!
NBC doesn't serve hockey to Canadians apparently, but looking at footage elsewhere it's a hard shot that bounces out -- this is hard to be sure about sometimes even for the refs and players! That's why there's a goal judge sitting behind the net. In this case it looks like it might have bounced off some of the crap they've got stationed inside the net; in the past you'd mostly see the impact on the netting, but there's still the rear bars -- normally there's a noise though.
If you think hockey is bad you should try watching lacrosse -- crowd injuries used to be a major problem there for people who didn't follow the action. Now I think there is dumb netting all over the place so people can safely focus on their beer.
Cheers, I got up at 5 to get through my morning chores, mass, and get a little toasted for the final. Fantastic game. Absolutely heartbreaking olympics for Canadian hockey.
Ok, I think we're on the same page here, you agree that there are some plays that are basically impossible to perceive directly for a casual audience. I think there are more plays in hockey where I have a distinct lag in perceiving what is happening than there are in other major team sports, and that this holds it back in ease of spectator interest compared to the other major team sports.
I like hockey well enough, but I think tv content and youth costs are the biggest things hurting hockey's mainstream popularity.
I wonder if professional lacrosse ever makes it big, if I'm capable of forming team loyalties anymore.
Can you typically tell whether an MLB pitch is a ball or a strike without seeing a replay/specialized camera view? I guess they have some electronic BS for this now too, but for me that's not necessary to enjoy the game!
I guess I don't understand the complaint -- typically it seems like people are saying that they can't see the puck at all -- but you are saying more like "90mph slapshots are hard to track"? That is true, but I'm not sure it's that big of a problem -- for another example, does it bother you when they bring out the chains to see whether a football team has made first down?
Yes, absolutely, and the dispute about this is making me realize this is largely a difference in perception at the level of baseline skill, I played baseball but never competitive hockey. I can tell balls from strikes to a reasonable certainty when watching on TV, though I'm very vulnerable to catcher framing. Live is a little tougher depending on angle of the seats.
It's not a complaint in the sense of "this should be different;" it's a fact about the sport that makes it more difficult to enjoy on TV compared to football or basketball.
Chains are normally for close plays, where it was difficult to see to begin with. But yes, it would bother me if the TV broadcast was regularly showing an obvious first down, and then the refs informed me that it wasn't, or vice versa. At some point that would really take away from the aesthetic enjoyment of the game, if I just never knew what was going on until someone told me.
I think it's bad when instant replay is necessary to determine, for example, what is a catch and what isn't, or when the TV angle seems to show an obvious first down and after review they determine something utterly opposite to what it looked like happened based on some obscure rule about forward progress. I hate seeing a play that looks like an amazing touchdown, and then it gets called back on instant replay because a toe was a centimeter over the line, so small that that it was impossible
I imagine most TV producers would agree that their goal is to present the game to the viewer in such a way that the viewer comprehends the action intuitively without needing to be told what was happening. Most innovations in sportscasting have been about aiming for that goal of making the game intuitive: the yellow first down line, the digital strike zone on broadcast, highlighting players or zones of the field.
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