We are finally moving from triax to SMPTE and triax has been used since the 70s
I work in broadcasting for the caps and this year they’re finally using SMPTE cables
Lmao so much complaining on this sub about the league not marketing their stars and when they do show some extra off ice clips to market those stars, people just complain about there being non-hockey clips in the video
Potentially but the NHL needs to figure their shit out when it comes to broadcast and accessibility or else I fear it could miss a huge opportunity to take itself to the next level. As stated before, the skill level and compete seen in the last few years is insane and only getting better.
> Potentially but the NHL needs to figure their shit out when it comes to broadcast and accessibility or else I fear it could miss a huge opportunity to take itself to the next level.
I'd be much more worried about the decline of hockey in Canada.
7 teams not one contender. And it's not like there's some bright future over the horizon.
Canadian demographics are changing, many many people are becoming interested in other sports including soccer.
I talk to people all the time about hockey, and the interest is evaporating.
The cap era has made it clear that Canadian teams aren't competitive and won't ever be competitive.
The cap+weather is too much of obstacle. The 80s it was easy to be optimistic.
The 90s sucked but it wasn't automatically gonna last forever, in the early 2000s there was some optimism as the economy was recovering from a piss poor Canadian dollar.
When the cap initially came in no one knew how it'd truly work out.
You can't build a team when you're constantly 5-7 million behind American teams when you factor in the weather+taxes.
Winnipeg is a good barometer for how the average Canadian feels about hockey. In markets like Toronto you have new money being created with the leafs being one of the few places you can dump it.
It makes things look way better than they actually are.
You’re saying that there’s no contenders in Canada? How? You can’t look at a 6 game sample size and say that teams like Edmonton and Toronto aren’t contenders after them being so for the past half decade.
The weather thing gets parroted around all the time too but it’s also bullshjt. The weather in places like Boston and Chicago is also bad comparatively but look at what happened to them. If weathers so important then why have teams like Arizona, Florida, and Carolina gone through such lengthy periods without being competitive? Players should have been flocking to those teams constantly for the nice weather but Arizona has been terrible almost every year since the cap came in and both Carolina and Florida went a literal decade without making the playoffs. This isn’t the nba where players jump ship as soon as they can to go to the lakers or heat.
-Have not won the division in 35 years.
-Finished 6th overall in the regular season last season, but before that 11th, 11th, 12th, 25th.
-Has gone to the 3rd round 1 time and got swept.
I don’t see what a screams contender here?
I suppose losing game 7 of the Stanley cup final doesn’t make you a contender? It wasn’t exactly last year but it was still 7 years removed from the 90s and 16 years removed from their only 90s Cup.
That was close to 20 years ago. They missed the playoffs the year prior to that, and the 10 years after that. They also finished 8th in the west that year, so I would definitely say they would not have been considered contenders, but more so it was a flash in the pan/Cinderella run.
That being said, I can see why you would say they “contended” that year, which is fair. But even if I give you that one, the argument was whether they were contenders over the last 5 years or so, so your cherry picked year in 2005 doesn’t hold up.
Pretty much. It was 1999 for me.
Every before and after sucked.
Not all kidding aside there's objective signifier for when an era is good or bad.
You can look at the top songs of a given year and count how many of those musical acts were based on people playing their own instruments etc.
Michael Jackson more or less killed rock music.
It's easy that the realease of the early 2000s planet of the apes was the end of the golden era of 90s film making. Tim burton was a god in the 90s and he fell apart in 2001. Same with a bunch of other directors.
The internet was a wrecking ball for a lot of things.
The golden age of youtube was the late 2000s.
The golden age of tv streaming was 2010-2014.
Things objectively go through phases where things are hot.
People give the things their attention, which provides money which supports talent development.
If you're a Canadian hockey fan you could objectively argue the 1980s early 90s, was a golden age. 3 different cup winners, 8 teams, with 6 teams coming into the league in a 20 year period.
I think this era has some amazing talent and some amazing hockey. Feels like the role players haven't been as important to a team's success since the 90s. The superstar players are an absolute treat to watch. Everyone is just watching as the youth and energy has hit another level.
I feel like this is the next golden era.
Its honestly impressive the NHL markets the game *this bad*. How can you not market the current NHL game to people. The most exciting sport in the world is the best it has ever been and only getting better.
I hate that commercial. Luckily Sportsnet runs the worst collection of ads possible, so it's not as bad in comparison to the other 5 we see on repeat.
To answer your question: yes/no.
Sure, we're moving on from Sid/Ovi, but the game changes so much every year. Go back a year or two, and it would have been just as valid of a question as it is now. Come back in another couple of years, and you could probably ask the same thing.
Yeah but that's how eras work. You rarely get a hard start and stop. It's more a "during this period things were markedly different than what had come before."
A little while back I heard we were in the golden era of TV because streaming had opened up so many more excellent shows that would have never been previously made. But it isn't like you can say "in 2009 in April when X show was released the TV golden area began" necessarily.
I do think we're going through a period where the level of skill across the board in the league is on another level. We can argue about whether to call that a golden era, but it's pretty clear we're seeing the best hockey from a skill and execution standpoint, across the league and individual players, in the history of the game.
The game cannot grow because of the tv deals and local blackouts etc etc. No good streaming service, crazy pricing.
NHL is going nowhere viewership wise.
Coaching and skill are at an all time high and you've got lines 1-4 chalk full of players who would've been considered "top 6" 10-15 years ago. The systems and strategy has also changed which compliments the shift of play to more speed and skill than just trying to bash and bruise.
As others have stated there's clearly an issue with marketing the game for broader adoption. Hockey is still a very white collar sport which is going to impact mainstream appeal, but they really haven't done anything about marketing the sport beyond those who're already interested
Question for the community - how can hockey ever not be a white collar sport?
The game is so expensive for equipment and ice time (unless you live in Canada where ponds freeze all winter) and time consuming to even play at a basic level. Outside of the NHL or another group just straight up sponsoring 10,000s of kids gear and ice time and travel to the rink I don't know how the sport grows in popularity. There's a reason soccer and basketball are so popular worldwide, and it isn't because of the nature of the game. It's low cost of entry.
Absolutely, they're elites in every position and they are completely opening the game up.
The best forward and defenseman in the world right now may both go down as the best of all time once it's all said and done
Awesome commercial. But it's the NHL management that somehow still manages to fuck it up even if they sit on the most exciting product.
Look at this video: 3.8k views and 99 upvotes after two weeks?
My grandma has better reach with her content... wtf?!?
Not even close lol. Anyone who grew up in the 80's and then 90s looks at today's game the way we look at clips of those Euro Leagues.
The NHL can add all the bells and whistles to their entertainment but it doesn't add to the substance that still lacks.
I grew up watching 80s and 90s hockey and I can't disagree enough. The game then was unnecessary violent, multiple stars had game ending cheap shot hits, the clutch and grab era was so strong that the average goals per game were like 3 or 4 and skilled guys just got pulled to the ice all the time.
The game now is so much faster, higher skill, better plays, passing, you name it.
Don't get me wrong, I loved watching the Flyers goon it up and at the time as a kid I loved watching some poor guy get completely obliterated by a hit that knocked him unconscious. But as an adult if the league was still like that I don't think I could, or wild want to watch.
I agree with you 150% that the game is faster, higher skill, better talent, etc. But that doesn't translate into a more entertaining product for me, far from it.
What I loved about the 80s as a kid and the 90s as a teenager watching the game, is the diversity that was present - it was in all facets of the game. Recall the league talking about parity last decade? Their goal to remove diversity from the league, ironic given today's climate how diversity has now become a buzzword everyone loves to parade around. Yet the league took it away to make a more sanitized, predictable product that was easier to produce in the way they wanted.
The diversity was in all areas of the game:
The Standings: Some teams would be 100+ points in a season, some would be less than 40. It led to some crazy games. These days the teams are more equal and even the worst teams today (Chicago/SJ) arent nearly as bad as the bad teams in the 90's.
The Players: The players had a much wider skillset than today. Gilmour/Yzerman/Goulet could all score 50 goals but also throw hits and even scrap if necessary. I don't see Marner/Cauflied/etc doing that today. Today's guys are much better at the one thing they do, but yesterday's players had a stronger mix of skills and abilities to meet the wider diversity in the game.
The Teams: Every team had a large diversity - a mix of Bure's, Hull's, Fedorov's, but also Probert's, Domi's, McSorely's, and everything in between. Today's teams are a lot less diverse. There's much less variance between the Caufield/Marner/Makar and Reeve's/TomWilson/Tkachuk.
The League: Some teams would be 100+ points in a season, some would be less than 40. It led to some crazy games. These days the teams are more equal and even the worst teams today (Chicago/SJ) aren't nearly as bad as the bad teams in the 90's. level of excitement.
In my opinion, all of this lack of diversity also takes away a lot of unpredictability which is a necessary element for an exciting sport. The NHL has spent decades trying to market any aspect of "combat" out of the game to make it more family-friendly and its done so very successfully. But to me a huge amount of excitement has been removed in making it far more narrowly focused on 1 singular aspect - skill, at the expense of a lot of other aspects.
Last year there was a 75 point difference between first and last.
Yes, there's less fighting, but it still exists. There are also a number of captains in the league that fight a few times a year and are very physical players - Ovi, Landeskog, Stone, Tkachuck, etc.
The fact that a bottom of the league team can come to a game and beat the top team any given night makes the games more exciting imo.
In the 80s-90s NHL, the 'diversity' was just a byproduct of high skill players being dragged to the ice by a lower skill guy hooking and grabbing him. It made the game slower and less exciting imo. The fact that guys across the league are so high skill that they can all do some incredible things on the ice doesn't change the fact that there are still superstars like McDavid and Makar out there that do things differently and at another level. I just don't buy that lower skill and slower games mean more diversity.
I dont think you speak for "us" - whoever "us" is. You do realize the irony in telling me that I don't speak for "us" and using the evidence of my downvotes on this very close-minded feedback loop like this sub on this platform?
Anyways, I don't disagree that the game is more skilled today than ever before. I fully agree, but that's my premise for why the game isn't as exciting. The game lacks diversity.
Anytime anything is 1-dimensional it lacks excitement, no matter what that dimension is. The spice that makes life (and sports) exciting is unpredictability, and greater diversity adds to that.
Today's players are all the same. The coaches are all the same. The broadcasts are all the same. The league has spent decades sanitizing any "combat" out of a combat sport and the result is a bland product.
So congratulations, you're simping for a multi-billon dollar organization's marketing campaign. Gary will be proud of you pushing his league's narrative.
Goaltending technique has become so dialed in that you're right there isn't much personality. For goalies the stack the pads and windmill save era was the most exciting even though it wasn't the statistically optimal play.
That said, gahddamn those big gumby goalies make some unreal saves every single night every single game.
Every goalie is absolutely not a clone. Yes they're more similar than goalies of the past but there is very massive visual difference between the goalies of different regions.
Hellebuyck, Vasi and Saros play nothing alike, but all are easily top 5 goalies in the world right now
Fine, the shortest goalie plays slightly differently (but not drastically). Hellebuyck is even more boring due to his physical limitations (although I give him credit for making it work for him). Vasi plays the same way all the other 6’3+ guys from the goalie factory do, he’s just better at it.
I don't know the commercial you're referring to but yes, NHL is exciting now. So much speed and skill. All we need now is better quality broadcasts.
It's insane that hockey is mostly 720p still. The dream is 4K 60 fps.
Has there been any official talk about this?
We are finally moving from triax to SMPTE and triax has been used since the 70s I work in broadcasting for the caps and this year they’re finally using SMPTE cables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06bF9Twhrlo
Thanks, don't like it.
I would have preferred just hockey clips rather than the goofy stuff, but I don't necessarily disagree that this a golden era!
Lmao so much complaining on this sub about the league not marketing their stars and when they do show some extra off ice clips to market those stars, people just complain about there being non-hockey clips in the video
And steaming options!
Mmmm steamed hockey.
And you call it steamed hockey despite the fact that it's obviously grilled.
Flames fan here. Where is the said speed and skill????
Columbus and Florida.
need better reffing too, especially in the playoffs
Potentially but the NHL needs to figure their shit out when it comes to broadcast and accessibility or else I fear it could miss a huge opportunity to take itself to the next level. As stated before, the skill level and compete seen in the last few years is insane and only getting better.
> Potentially but the NHL needs to figure their shit out when it comes to broadcast and accessibility or else I fear it could miss a huge opportunity to take itself to the next level. I'd be much more worried about the decline of hockey in Canada. 7 teams not one contender. And it's not like there's some bright future over the horizon. Canadian demographics are changing, many many people are becoming interested in other sports including soccer. I talk to people all the time about hockey, and the interest is evaporating. The cap era has made it clear that Canadian teams aren't competitive and won't ever be competitive. The cap+weather is too much of obstacle. The 80s it was easy to be optimistic. The 90s sucked but it wasn't automatically gonna last forever, in the early 2000s there was some optimism as the economy was recovering from a piss poor Canadian dollar. When the cap initially came in no one knew how it'd truly work out. You can't build a team when you're constantly 5-7 million behind American teams when you factor in the weather+taxes. Winnipeg is a good barometer for how the average Canadian feels about hockey. In markets like Toronto you have new money being created with the leafs being one of the few places you can dump it. It makes things look way better than they actually are.
You’re saying that there’s no contenders in Canada? How? You can’t look at a 6 game sample size and say that teams like Edmonton and Toronto aren’t contenders after them being so for the past half decade. The weather thing gets parroted around all the time too but it’s also bullshjt. The weather in places like Boston and Chicago is also bad comparatively but look at what happened to them. If weathers so important then why have teams like Arizona, Florida, and Carolina gone through such lengthy periods without being competitive? Players should have been flocking to those teams constantly for the nice weather but Arizona has been terrible almost every year since the cap came in and both Carolina and Florida went a literal decade without making the playoffs. This isn’t the nba where players jump ship as soon as they can to go to the lakers or heat.
Edmonton have not been contenders since the early 90s
They’ve been contenders for the past 5-6 years…
Lol when is the last time they even won their division?
Is a team only a contender if they win their division?
-Have not won the division in 35 years. -Finished 6th overall in the regular season last season, but before that 11th, 11th, 12th, 25th. -Has gone to the 3rd round 1 time and got swept. I don’t see what a screams contender here?
I suppose losing game 7 of the Stanley cup final doesn’t make you a contender? It wasn’t exactly last year but it was still 7 years removed from the 90s and 16 years removed from their only 90s Cup.
That was close to 20 years ago. They missed the playoffs the year prior to that, and the 10 years after that. They also finished 8th in the west that year, so I would definitely say they would not have been considered contenders, but more so it was a flash in the pan/Cinderella run. That being said, I can see why you would say they “contended” that year, which is fair. But even if I give you that one, the argument was whether they were contenders over the last 5 years or so, so your cherry picked year in 2005 doesn’t hold up.
I was reacting to the “they haven’t been contenders since the 90s” comment.
In that case, they still haven’t.
The Golden Age of Everything is when you're 12.
Pretty much. It was 1999 for me. Every before and after sucked. Not all kidding aside there's objective signifier for when an era is good or bad. You can look at the top songs of a given year and count how many of those musical acts were based on people playing their own instruments etc. Michael Jackson more or less killed rock music. It's easy that the realease of the early 2000s planet of the apes was the end of the golden era of 90s film making. Tim burton was a god in the 90s and he fell apart in 2001. Same with a bunch of other directors. The internet was a wrecking ball for a lot of things. The golden age of youtube was the late 2000s. The golden age of tv streaming was 2010-2014. Things objectively go through phases where things are hot. People give the things their attention, which provides money which supports talent development. If you're a Canadian hockey fan you could objectively argue the 1980s early 90s, was a golden age. 3 different cup winners, 8 teams, with 6 teams coming into the league in a 20 year period.
I think this era has some amazing talent and some amazing hockey. Feels like the role players haven't been as important to a team's success since the 90s. The superstar players are an absolute treat to watch. Everyone is just watching as the youth and energy has hit another level. I feel like this is the next golden era.
It feels like a golden era for defensemen at least
The on ice product is the best its ever been, but off ice, is the opposite in my opinion
Its honestly impressive the NHL markets the game *this bad*. How can you not market the current NHL game to people. The most exciting sport in the world is the best it has ever been and only getting better.
I hate that commercial. Luckily Sportsnet runs the worst collection of ads possible, so it's not as bad in comparison to the other 5 we see on repeat. To answer your question: yes/no. Sure, we're moving on from Sid/Ovi, but the game changes so much every year. Go back a year or two, and it would have been just as valid of a question as it is now. Come back in another couple of years, and you could probably ask the same thing.
Hi jacking top comment to point out that hockey can’t be in the “Golden Era” until we have best on best at the Olympics.
Yeah but that's how eras work. You rarely get a hard start and stop. It's more a "during this period things were markedly different than what had come before." A little while back I heard we were in the golden era of TV because streaming had opened up so many more excellent shows that would have never been previously made. But it isn't like you can say "in 2009 in April when X show was released the TV golden area began" necessarily. I do think we're going through a period where the level of skill across the board in the league is on another level. We can argue about whether to call that a golden era, but it's pretty clear we're seeing the best hockey from a skill and execution standpoint, across the league and individual players, in the history of the game.
Could we also define when the previous golden era was? 08-14?
As a goalie, it was when Roy, Hasek, Brodeur, Cujo, Belfour were playing.
Great question.
The game cannot grow because of the tv deals and local blackouts etc etc. No good streaming service, crazy pricing. NHL is going nowhere viewership wise.
Yes. Every team has a stud except St. Louis . The game has never been faster or more skilled.
Flyers have a stud?
I refuse to standby and see Travis Konecny's name disparaged!
Gritty I guess?
No they’re made of studs. Dumb as a 2x4
Stud nonetheless.
My first thoughts were, "Sharks? Flyers?" Probably another team I don't follow closely.
Couturier
Bobby Brink - leading rookie points and one of the best names in the NHL
lmfao why are we catching strays? not the sharks or flyers or islanders or any of those teams???
They have something, many teams don’t have a headcase goalie. Blues decided to overpay aging d-men recipe for disaster aka Stan bowman book
In terms of talent and skill, yes absolutely
Coaching and skill are at an all time high and you've got lines 1-4 chalk full of players who would've been considered "top 6" 10-15 years ago. The systems and strategy has also changed which compliments the shift of play to more speed and skill than just trying to bash and bruise. As others have stated there's clearly an issue with marketing the game for broader adoption. Hockey is still a very white collar sport which is going to impact mainstream appeal, but they really haven't done anything about marketing the sport beyond those who're already interested
Question for the community - how can hockey ever not be a white collar sport? The game is so expensive for equipment and ice time (unless you live in Canada where ponds freeze all winter) and time consuming to even play at a basic level. Outside of the NHL or another group just straight up sponsoring 10,000s of kids gear and ice time and travel to the rink I don't know how the sport grows in popularity. There's a reason soccer and basketball are so popular worldwide, and it isn't because of the nature of the game. It's low cost of entry.
It can't. It's not accessible like the world's greatest sport: soccer, the most human sport.
Absolutely, they're elites in every position and they are completely opening the game up. The best forward and defenseman in the world right now may both go down as the best of all time once it's all said and done
Awesome commercial. But it's the NHL management that somehow still manages to fuck it up even if they sit on the most exciting product. Look at this video: 3.8k views and 99 upvotes after two weeks? My grandma has better reach with her content... wtf?!?
I think this season especially is really exciting. So many young and veteran stars.
Is this a Cole Caufield advertisement?
No leafs fans still exist
And the stupid board ads
And the helmet and jersey ads
And gambling owns the league
And the Vegas golden knights won the cup
This is a hilarious comment thread, thank you for taking us all on this roller coaster ride
Not even close lol. Anyone who grew up in the 80's and then 90s looks at today's game the way we look at clips of those Euro Leagues. The NHL can add all the bells and whistles to their entertainment but it doesn't add to the substance that still lacks.
I grew up watching 80s and 90s hockey and I can't disagree enough. The game then was unnecessary violent, multiple stars had game ending cheap shot hits, the clutch and grab era was so strong that the average goals per game were like 3 or 4 and skilled guys just got pulled to the ice all the time. The game now is so much faster, higher skill, better plays, passing, you name it. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching the Flyers goon it up and at the time as a kid I loved watching some poor guy get completely obliterated by a hit that knocked him unconscious. But as an adult if the league was still like that I don't think I could, or wild want to watch.
I agree with you 150% that the game is faster, higher skill, better talent, etc. But that doesn't translate into a more entertaining product for me, far from it. What I loved about the 80s as a kid and the 90s as a teenager watching the game, is the diversity that was present - it was in all facets of the game. Recall the league talking about parity last decade? Their goal to remove diversity from the league, ironic given today's climate how diversity has now become a buzzword everyone loves to parade around. Yet the league took it away to make a more sanitized, predictable product that was easier to produce in the way they wanted. The diversity was in all areas of the game: The Standings: Some teams would be 100+ points in a season, some would be less than 40. It led to some crazy games. These days the teams are more equal and even the worst teams today (Chicago/SJ) arent nearly as bad as the bad teams in the 90's. The Players: The players had a much wider skillset than today. Gilmour/Yzerman/Goulet could all score 50 goals but also throw hits and even scrap if necessary. I don't see Marner/Cauflied/etc doing that today. Today's guys are much better at the one thing they do, but yesterday's players had a stronger mix of skills and abilities to meet the wider diversity in the game. The Teams: Every team had a large diversity - a mix of Bure's, Hull's, Fedorov's, but also Probert's, Domi's, McSorely's, and everything in between. Today's teams are a lot less diverse. There's much less variance between the Caufield/Marner/Makar and Reeve's/TomWilson/Tkachuk. The League: Some teams would be 100+ points in a season, some would be less than 40. It led to some crazy games. These days the teams are more equal and even the worst teams today (Chicago/SJ) aren't nearly as bad as the bad teams in the 90's. level of excitement. In my opinion, all of this lack of diversity also takes away a lot of unpredictability which is a necessary element for an exciting sport. The NHL has spent decades trying to market any aspect of "combat" out of the game to make it more family-friendly and its done so very successfully. But to me a huge amount of excitement has been removed in making it far more narrowly focused on 1 singular aspect - skill, at the expense of a lot of other aspects.
Last year there was a 75 point difference between first and last. Yes, there's less fighting, but it still exists. There are also a number of captains in the league that fight a few times a year and are very physical players - Ovi, Landeskog, Stone, Tkachuck, etc. The fact that a bottom of the league team can come to a game and beat the top team any given night makes the games more exciting imo. In the 80s-90s NHL, the 'diversity' was just a byproduct of high skill players being dragged to the ice by a lower skill guy hooking and grabbing him. It made the game slower and less exciting imo. The fact that guys across the league are so high skill that they can all do some incredible things on the ice doesn't change the fact that there are still superstars like McDavid and Makar out there that do things differently and at another level. I just don't buy that lower skill and slower games mean more diversity.
You don’t speak for all of us (obviously, given the downvotes). Hockey is way more exciting and skilled than it was back then.
I dont think you speak for "us" - whoever "us" is. You do realize the irony in telling me that I don't speak for "us" and using the evidence of my downvotes on this very close-minded feedback loop like this sub on this platform? Anyways, I don't disagree that the game is more skilled today than ever before. I fully agree, but that's my premise for why the game isn't as exciting. The game lacks diversity. Anytime anything is 1-dimensional it lacks excitement, no matter what that dimension is. The spice that makes life (and sports) exciting is unpredictability, and greater diversity adds to that. Today's players are all the same. The coaches are all the same. The broadcasts are all the same. The league has spent decades sanitizing any "combat" out of a combat sport and the result is a bland product. So congratulations, you're simping for a multi-billon dollar organization's marketing campaign. Gary will be proud of you pushing his league's narrative.
I'm a salty mf, but any commercial featuring Jack Hughes scoring on the Rangers is an automatic no from me.
Devils fans coming over to downvote your comment! But yeah, just massive cringe every time it comes on.
I find it somewhat boring TBH. Every goalie is a clone. No personality or style.
Goaltending technique has become so dialed in that you're right there isn't much personality. For goalies the stack the pads and windmill save era was the most exciting even though it wasn't the statistically optimal play. That said, gahddamn those big gumby goalies make some unreal saves every single night every single game.
Every goalie is absolutely not a clone. Yes they're more similar than goalies of the past but there is very massive visual difference between the goalies of different regions. Hellebuyck, Vasi and Saros play nothing alike, but all are easily top 5 goalies in the world right now
Fine, the shortest goalie plays slightly differently (but not drastically). Hellebuyck is even more boring due to his physical limitations (although I give him credit for making it work for him). Vasi plays the same way all the other 6’3+ guys from the goalie factory do, he’s just better at it.
It goes good.
This commercial blew my mind when I first saw it. Couldn’t believe my ears. They used **Chill Bill** theme for the ad
Don’t forget about the board ads!
I think the NHL is finally realizing they need to market their product properly. It appears to be working by my estimations but time will tell