Press Row

Overview

The NHL is still that “other sport” that only a handful of your friends watch—but the ones that do can’t get enough of it. They probably played in their youth and still talk about “diamonds” and “finding the top of the circle” or other lingo that, to the rest of the world, might as well be in Arabic.

You can see the NHL hopes Ovechkin vs. Crosby can become their Magic vs. Bird, a decade-long feud that results in heated playoff battles and boatloads of high ratings. But if no one pays attention to the feud besides the die-hard fans—the fans that would watch games with or without Crosby—then what’s the difference?

For a league always investigating new avenues to reach fans, maybe the Internet and new media could be an untapped resource?

Blogosphere: The NHL and its teams enjoy a solid presence in the blogosphere, with plenty of active, well-read team-specific blogs and several strong league-wide sites. The Puck Stops Here and On Frozen Blog are both good reads, but Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy is, to me, the top dog here. For the (few) casual hockey fans, you can read Puck Daddy a few times a week and keep a good beat on what’s happening in the NHL.

League/team websites: I have to admit—before embarking on this project, I knew very little about NHL.com or its team sites. Overall, I’d say the league’s web presence is….above average.

For starters, I really like NHL.com.

1. It’s simple yet engaging. It’s not quite as flashy as NFL.com is, but it’s very well organized and you can find what’s new and hot quickly.
2. The site offers fresh content and plenty of video—a good mix of highlights and feature stories, essential for a league trying desperately to connect its stars with fans.
3. The NHL GameCenter LIVE sounds like a neat idea that other leagues have in various forms. I didn’t get to try it (I didn’t pay up!) but it doesn’t look too expensive if you’re a die-hard fan that doesn’t have a DirecTV package.

Like most leagues, many team sites follow a cookie-cutter format from top to bottom, so besides team colors and advertising, they almost all look alike. There are plenty of reasons this happens—cost being one of them—but it robs the site of any personality whatsoever.

Sure, it gets the news across and you can see the team rosters. But aside from the occasional team feature story or to hear about the latest promotions, why would I visit a team site instead of ESPN.com or NHL.com? Unless I was an absolute bleeding-blue Rangers fan, there’s nothing on their team site that I couldn’t find elsewhere.

I’ve already opined that news outlets going online-only will succeed if they can offer a better experience than their competitors. These team sites offer little to no experience at all, which to me is money very poorly spent.

Facebook / Twitter: Considering their resources, the NHL makes a decent social media showing. The teams that do host Twitter feeds should try conversing with fans, rather than simply posting links to news and stories; it’s an opportunity to build excitement, much like some NBA teams are doing. I didn’t find many teams engaging with their fans on Twitter at all.

Kind of like how Alex Ovechkin did—at least, until he stopped updating his feed in January. Whoever assists Alex with his various channels of communication would be wise to re-start his feed—it looked like he was just starting to do a fantastic job at conversing with fans and bloggers on a regular basis. Considering Alex is one of the stars the NHL is essentially punching their meal ticket with, that could be a huge win.

The only other pro hockey player I found on Twitter was Patrik Elias, who hasn’t updated since late January, either. I did find Michael DiLorenzo, the NHL’s Director of Corporate Communications, who looks like he tweets and converses with fans often. You can also follow his feed on his non-affiliated web site. Nice touch, and a bit unfortunate that the site of an NHL exec has more personality than any of the team sites in his entire league.

The NHL exists on Facebook, but few of its teams have active, team-run fan pages.

Overall

Despite a decent start in media efforts, the NHL continues to face the same problem it always has: the inability to expand its wings beyond its small group of passionate fans.

I’ve met very few people that only “kind of like” hockey—either they love it, or don’t really follow it at all. There’s a chance these Internet and new media in-roads might expose new fans to the game, currently enjoying (like the NBA) an explosion of talent not experienced in a long time.

Could this new media world help the NHL grow in popularity? It’s certainly possible, but the league and its teams need to sit down and really strategize a way to build a more expansive fan base; simply being a “cool sport” and “the best sport to see in person” just won’t get them over the hump. I’m sure the league has considered (and possibly implemented) a grassroots education program, like the NFL’s wildly successful youth football initiatives, but the results wouldn’t be seen for a decade at least. There must be an answer in the here and now.

And until the NHL figures out a way to push its Ovechkin’s and Crosby’s into new living rooms, the same mega-fans that TiVo every game will be the ones that blog and tweet to each other about it, and the rest of the sports realm will continue to go about their business, unfazed.

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