MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - Hey GARY! Factoid for your next NHL governors meeting: After baseball, professional hockey is the second most watched sport in North America. So why  aren't you and the NHL governors making more money and tooting that horn in the face of the NECKCAR guys trying to lap you? 

Right now you have six hockey team owners in the CHL and the ECHL who are far smarter than their respective leagues, and yours. You might want to pay some attention to their inter-league games, and what that MEANS for your sport.  Inter-league grudge matches help promote the professional sport because they focus the importance of the games and the leagues for the fans.  To beef that up, though, it would sure be great if the NHL stocked the ECHL and CHL with real-deal players, rather than have them out-play everyone in Junior.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Hockey is like revenge: A dish served best cold, and right in your face. 

You NHL guys keep worrying about the almighty tube, because all of the other sports make their jack by taking the Pavlovianly-conditioned Joe NFL Fan and redirecting his SportsCenter-honed, sound-bite-infused brain and twisting it on to something to keep it stimulated until the NFL preseason starts.

The NHL's only bowl game on TV has been avoiding being flushed into obscurity on the boob tube by NECKCAR. Their pitiful numbers for televised hockey, particularly in the playoffs, should reinforce that Joe NFL isn't going to be your fan any time soon. At least you won't be getting him directly via  the tube.

Look at the GREAT job that the CHL and the ECHL have done at developing outside-the-gridiron thinkers from Alaska to the deepest reaches of the Florida coastline who turn off the TV and come into double-AA level hockey facilities to watch the game.  If you want fans outside of your immediate major metro markets  to watch televised NHL games, the first thing that you have to do is to get them hooked on local/regional minor hockey.

Of course to call, the CHL & ECHL Class-AA hockey is really a bit of a lie. That is where they would like to be, and probably, given the last decade of development of the market for professional hockey, where they deserve to be.  All that seems to be stopping them is the fundamental cheapness of the NHL owners, who are far happier taking their players on the cheap from Junior and over-compensating the Triple-A guys in the AHL.

The NHL uses the American Hockey League (AHL) for cold storage and development of those guys right on the cusp of a major league career.  It goes positiely liquid though when you poke below the hard frozen surface of its triple-A system. They have loose deals with a handful of CHL & ECHL clubs, but tons of deals with Canadian junior clubs  of amateur players in leagues like the OHL, WHL, QMJHL, and the Canadian Hockey League (The other CHL.). They grab a fair number of players without vowels in their names from the Euros as well.

The ECHL loves to tout how many NHLers are their babies, but they are a drop in the bucket of the big system, and many, many Class-AA level clubs have little or no affiliation with the NHL.

Mr. Bettman needs to follow in the footsteps of his former boss, NBA commissioner Stern, and see that developing a full-scale, structured minor league system is good business and good for the sport.

Using Junior hockey is great if your primary television audience is in Canada.  To hit NECKCAR where they live, though, the NHL governors really need to work with the ECHL and CHL on a formalized system that looks more like MLB.

There is a case to be made for real class-AA hockey.  There are a lot of guys in junior too good to be in junior. They need a step between there and the NHL, and the AHL is still too much jump for them.

There are also a lot of guys that either should be in a Class-A level of the game, or shouldn't even be picking up sticks. They are around because the NHL has tolerated minor pro hockey rather than embrace it.

Sports follows the money, and there is a lot of money out there spent by millions of  folks who go see live hockey near their homes. 

After they "get it" live, there is pretty credible evidence that  they'll be connected to their pay-per-view with some enthusiasm.  Look at how the baseball leagues use their clubs as super-markets to connect fans to both live baseball and the television major league packages.  From Austin (Round Rock) to Corpus Christi, fans are in Astros country. There is a real bond between fans in a regional super market and the players if they can watch them polish their act in the smaller markets, then shine at the major league level.

The NHL is missing the connect with its audience. When they get rabid screaming fans in Bakersfield, California, where the nearest real ice is in British Columbia, this isn't papa Jacques' alternative to shoveling out the sidewalk on Sunday afternoon anymore.

Knowing what to do with that connection is the difference between making a whole lot of jack and having jack.

It would seem that the individual owners of the Double-A clubs are a bit smarter than the leagues that they govern.  These pre-season games are a good idea because the ECHL and CHL overlap territory in a bunch of areas.  There are some logical grudge matches that make more sense from a fan level than inking a deal with one league or the other, which made more sense to the owners from a business level.

Establishing these inter-league rivalries sets up the ability to really ambassador the sport in places that the NHL itself has virtually no presence. 

The official policy of both class-AA leagues is that they allow, with permission, these games to take place.  Why not pump it up, though, and take credit for it?  When it is a league-promoted idea, inter-league play props up both leagues as being big enough, both financially and in terms of that emotional security that we all secretly long for, to do unto each other on the ice what they do to each other on the map of markets across America where they set up hockey clubs.  They've been slugging it out for supremacy in the AA class for a decade. Why not take the battle to the ice?

If the hockey leagues want to become less Dangerfield-like and get some respect, they need to tap into that huge reservoir of enthusiasm for the game in Double-A and make these two competing leagues talent-filled pools that drive business to pay-per-view and their HD offerings on the flat-screen. 

- Brian ROSS