The National Hockey League and its games are nearing their last leg in the United States. There are several reasons behind this, but it should be mentioned that with only six teams in the league, there was very little interest in hockey in the United States to begin with. While there are die hard fans in the original cities with teams, such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston, the die hard interest of 20,000 fans is not enough to support an entire league.

Television is what drives the success of many sports to the top of the entertainment industry. To the untrained eye, hockey is perhaps the worst sport to watch. The natural progression of the game is lightening fast, which can leave many newcomers to the sport blinking and wondering just what transpired. Often times, the puck is too small to be picked up by the camera, and it always disappears during goals, which means several replays recounting different angles of many plays have to be shown in order for people to under stand exactly what happened.

Another problem with hockey is the US announcers during these matches. For any veteran hockey fan, some of the commentary which is supplied by these men can border on televised journalism, instead of comments on the match at hand. In addition, the nomenclature which surrounds a hockey game is confusing, and to man first time watchers, it can be entirely foreign. Comments such as back-checking, half-boards, and others make no sense to hockey newbies, and often times, many of the American announcers themselves are entirely unfamiliar with how to call the game. Canadian announcers don’t seem to have this problem, but there are relatively few of them who announce American hockey, and so this is a major problem in the sport.

Another problem which exists is that all of the players are pretty much Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, or Russian, with very difficult names to pronounce. After the season ends, these players disappear back to their homeland and are not heard of again until it is time for training camp. Because of the high ratio of Hispanic and African-Americans in the United States, its clear why hockey is not a popular sport with these groups. They traditionally do not play hockey as children, and as such, they feel no fan loyalty to the game, and there is no reason for any of them to take up watching it as a hobby or a past time.





Aside from these demographics, the entire game of hockey is a mess which is very hard to follow unless you’re a coach, former players, or a referee. Fans who have grown up watching and playing games may have no trouble following along, but for the majority of Americans who have never been exposed to a hockey game, it can be downright boring to watch, no matter how exciting the action is supposed to be.

These reasons work to compound onto one another, and slowly, they’re choking the life out of hockey in the United States.