Reality Check: Settling For Second

For Canadians, the “Golden Goal” Sidney Crosby slid under Ryan Miller’s pads this past Sunday sent an entire country into absolute delirium. As an American hockey fan, while you think you may understand what the win means to our neighbors north of the border, you don’t. You can’t. Not while living here in the U.S.

Outside of what the sport of soccer means in many counties around the world, the love for hockey in Canada is like that whistle only dogs can hear or ultraviolet light to most of us here in the U.S.

And not to rain on the amazing parade that was the U.S. hockey team’s remarkable run to the gold medal game, but even if Patrick Kane or Zach Parise had managed to get one more puck past Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo in OT, the reaction from most folks here in the U.S. would have been a collective yawn.

USA goalie Ryan Miller (39) reacts after giving up the game-winning goal to Canada's Sidney Crosby in overtime of the men's gold medal ice hockey game at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Don’t believe me? Well, the goal by Crosby is already being compared to the one scored by Paul Henderson back in the 1972 Summit Series the NHL played against the former Soviet Union. Henderson’s tally in the final game with 34 seconds to go gave Canada the series. A journeyman winger who averaged 20 goals a season during a 12-year NHL career was catapulted into legendary status in the country’s sports lore. Mr. Henderson, to this day, is still one of the most talked about athletes in Canadian sports history and probably hasn’t paid for dinner there in almost 40 years.

Now, in comparison, the most famous goal scored in American hockey history was, of course, Mike Eruzione’s winner against the Soviets in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. The stunning 4-3 win gave the U.S. a chance to play for gold against Finland, which they grabbed two nights later.

Eruzione could run naked down the middle of Broadway in hockey skates waving the American flag and all he’d get is arrested (rightfully so, I suppose). The point is, poor Mike enjoyed the spotlight for a bit in the immediate aftermath of those games, but it dimmed quickly. If you randomly lined up 1,000 people in Canada today and asked them who Paul Henderson is, 999 would tell you precisely who he is and what his goal meant to them and their family back in 1972. (Keep in mind the goal was scored in the wee hours of the morning in Canada as the game was played in the Soviet Union.)

Do that same exercise here with Eruzione and you’d get maybe two folks in the know – and that’s only if his mother was one of the thousand you were fortunate enough to have picked.

Based on the general lack of interest the networks have shown in televising hockey, perhaps more remarkable  than Team U.S.A.’s run was the fact NBC made the decision to broadcast the entire game live—on a Sunday afternoon no less. Something ABC didn’t do back in 1980 as they ran the 5 p.m. game taped to show at 8 p.m.

Perhaps the greater point here is how poorly the NHL markets its product here in the U.S. The league hasn’t recognized any of the anniversaries that have passed since Eruzione’s goal and actually does very little to promote the players it sends to the games that make up a huge percentage of the total number of players that participate (we don’t know that exact number because the NHL doesn’t either).

The point is, the excitement over that moment and the magnitude of it was lost on a nation that simply has never embraced this great sport. It’s a game played at such a high speed today by dazzling athletes that combine amazing skating ability with deft puck handling skills—all this with a wonderfully nasty edge thrown in for good measure.

How can you fail to market all that? Don’t know, but the NHL does a consistently awful job of that every year. The Olympics move to Sochi, Russia in 2014 and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is toying with the idea of not sending NHL players at all. See what I mean. (Memo to Bettman: Yo Gary, make it work.)

So now the NHL season resumes and the fan base shrinks from millions to thousands. The playoffs will showcase hockey just as scintillating as Sunday’s gold medal game and no one will watch because no one gets Versus. Come early June, someone will carry around what is clearly the coolest trophy in all of sports—the Stanley Cup—and three weeks later no one will remember who carried around the coolest trophy in all of sports.

So, just for kicks, let’s say Miller makes the save on Crosby’s little slider and play goes back the other way and Ithaca, NY’s Dustin Brown rips one past Luongo. What do you think happens? I’ll tell ya—Years from now a few thousand of us remember exactly where we were when Brown scored “the goal” and the rest of country gets ready to pick a winner on American Idol. Meanwhile, in Canada, hardware stores simply can’t stock enough solid braided rope and Dustin Brown is barred from entering the country.

Oh yeah, and Brown pays for all his dinners in the U.S. over the next 40 years.

Enough said.

By the way, when do those Idol kids go on tour? Geeze.