March 1, 2010

Attention-hungry NHL hopes for Olympic carryover

By Wes Goldstein | CBSSports.com Staff Writer

It came down to a great play made by a great player in a great game.

The kind of drama anyone can understand easily at first glance.

And the monster national television ratings said there were a lot of people watching it happen too. Among them were likely casual sports fans and some just simply caught up in a captivating storyline written by an underdog group of Americans.

So really, this Olympic tournament that ended with Canada edging the U.S. in a heart-stopping final was everything the attention-starved NHL could have hoped for. But does it make that much of a difference for the league?

That's the question league officials say they are wrestling with, although all the hints they have been dropping point to this being the last time the NHL gets involved in the Olympics. The players, most audibly Washington superstar Alex Ovechkin, have made it clear they want to go to Sochi in 2014, and the coaches of both the Canadian and American squads insisted it was worth the effort.

"We do a pretty good job of stealing players from other countries, and I think their fans deserve a chance to see a tournament like this," said Team USA head coach Ron Wilson.

Fairness aside, there are few tangible benefits that have appeared previously from closing business during a prime time; there is a growing sense around the league that the "good-for-the-game" investment isn't justified by the return. Commissioner Gary Bettman has advanced that sentiment repeatedly, arguing that the excitement of the Games, particularly when they are in a hockey hotbed in Vancouver, tend to minimize the difficultly they pose for the NHL season.

"As thrilled as we were, the fact of the matter is when you get seduced by the two weeks of Olympic competition, you can't forget it has an impact on our season and how our clubs operate," Bettman said Monday on the NHL Network. "It will probably to some extent impact the stretch and the playoffs; you have to balance whether or not it's worth it."

The league has certainly jumped through hoops to take part in the past four Olympic Games. It has condensed its schedules, risked injuries and shut down so the players can represent their countries, although the effort has been motivated less by altruism than by promoting the best of its product on the world's biggest stage.

Even so, going to those kinds of lengths and assuming so much risk deserves some kind of payback, and none really came after Nagano, Torino or even Salt Lake. But this time the NHL may finally get a reward thanks to clean-cut poster boy Sidney Crosby winning the gold medal for Canada in heroic fashion after an emotionally charged game.

Of course it might have been better for the NHL had the young Americans won gold, something no one imagined possible just two short weeks ago. But Team USA came close enough to capture everyone's imagination. And it did so by turning in its best overall effort of the tournament in the finale, coming back valiantly to force overtime in the final minute before succumbing.

"It showed all the good there is in hockey, the heart and determination everybody plays with, the battle level, the character of the athletes," Team USA captain Jamie Langenbrunner said. "It's a pretty special sport."

And one that more people might be tempted to notice a little more after being thrilled that way.

The NHL barely makes a blip on the sports radar in the U.S. during the best of times, and there is no good way to measure the tangible impact, if any, of the NHL's Olympic participation on its business or popularity. But Team USA's great run over the past two weeks in Vancouver gained more American media and public attention for the league than any of the previous Olympics, including 2002 in Salt Lake when Miracle on Ice coach Herb Brooks led the team to silver.

And the bright side is that this high-profile moment comes just as the league is entering the most compelling part of its season. The NHL resumes play with a quarter of the schedule remaining, only about half a dozen teams out of playoff contention and the trade deadline only days away.

If there was ever a time to capitalize on being front and center on the sports radar, this would be it, except that the traditional problems of minimal national television exposure remain. So is there anything special the NHL can do to take advantage, short of having Canada and the U.S. play a best-of-7 for the Stanley Cup?

"We'll continue to do the things we're doing in terms of marketing and promoting special big events like the Winter Classic, going to the Olympics as we did this year and gearing up for the playoffs," Bettman said. "Hopefully a number of the people who got to experience NHL hockey by watching this Olympic tournament will start paying more attention to us and our players when they do their thing that they do on a regular basis."

Hopefully.