Detroit Saga
The Detroit Red Wings may have won the Stanly Cup this last season, but the Pittsburgh Penguins emerged as a real contender with the young talent to take the NHL championship and bring fans back to the game. Everyone already knew who the Red Wings were, and almost everybody knew who Sidney Crosby was, but now hockey fans and general sports fans alike know who the Penguins are.
The Penguins are a young team led by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and goalie Marc-Andre Fluery. Many Pittsburgh sports fans have not purchased tickets to a hockey game since Mario Lemeiux was playing in his prime, but that will all change next season.
Mellon Arena will see plenty with Penguins tickets as Sidney Crosby, the best marketing tool the NHL has a since Wayne Gretzky, takes the ice. His talent and his following could reinvigorate the sport beyond the metropolitan borders of Pittsburgh.
Several hockey cities still exist though. The East Coast has been the crutch for the league to stand on for sometime. New Jersey Devils tickets and Philadelphia Flyers tickets have managed to keep their diehard fans with much of a drop off.
Of course the recent battle with the league and the Rangers does not help, but not many could imagine Madison Square Garden without New York Rangers tickets, even if more than half the city could not name a player on the roster.
The league is starting to make a comeback and the Atlantic power houses will be key to keeping NHL afloat while they battle off a the new Russian league (the Continental Hockey League) for the next couple of years. The only real threat to the league is the call for Russian stars in North America to return home.
In the meantime, stars like Sidney Crosby will continue to make fans out of a new generation just finding the sport and bring those who abandoned the sport after the league abandoned them back.
The ratings on network television were not bad this past season, so hopefully the nations will see that as a sign that the ice is exciting again, and not just associate skates with figure skating.
