Small Markets. Big Results. (Published 2006) (2024)

BUFFALO, May 25 — Everything is going exactly as the National Hockey League planned, if not as it wanted. Another arena rocks with the renewed excitement of playoff hockey, and two small-market teams are playing here in late May, a time long reserved for their big-market brothers.

But the energy vibe and broadcast waves emanating from HSBC Arena — home of the rejuvenated Buffalo Sabres, bankrupt and teetering toward extinction three years ago — are not infinite.

The N.H.L., looking for a comeback, is left to wonder: How long and sweeping is this radius of intrigue?

The league fought for years to ensure the success of small-market teams. And now that it has found the formula, the timing could not be worse.

In the league's first postseason since 2004, the Sabres lead the Carolina Hurricanes, 2-1, in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals. The Edmonton Oilers hold a 3-1 series lead over the Anaheim Mighty Ducks after losing Game 4 Thursday night in the Western Conference.

Buffalo is the smallest of the 24 American N.H.L. markets. Raleigh, N.C., home of the Hurricanes, is the second smallest. Edmonton, Alberta, one of six Canadian N.H.L. markets, is the smallest in the league.

The playoff survival of their teams represents a be-careful-what-you-wish-for conundrum for the N.H.L. A year ago, after an entire season was wiped out by a lockout, the league faced two tasks: immediately rebuild its business model to make small-market teams more viable and competitive, while trying to generate widespread buzz and capture those loitering on fandom's fringes.

It seems that the first objective was met. It might have come at the expense of the other. But N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman chooses a long-term view, believing that last year's advent of the salary cap and revenue sharing will soon blur the lines between small-market and big-market teams, as they have in the National Football League, whose all-for-one, one-for-all business model the N.H.L. tried to copy.

"I think the market size is irrelevant," Bettman said before Buffalo beat Carolina in Game 3 Wednesday. "The most important thing for people who have any interest in hockey is how compelling the product is on the ice, and the games have been spectacular."

The pressing issue, though, is not about engaging those who have an interest in hockey. It is engaging those who do not.

"People will care," said Carolina General Manager Jim Rutherford, who was asked if the league could draw fans to, say, a Sabres-Oilers final series, but not dismissing his own team's chances. "Everybody in upstate New York will care, everybody in Alberta will care. Everybody in Canada will care because it's a Canadian team. The fact of the matter is, if it's not the 'marquee teams' " — his fingers pantomimed quotation marks — "it doesn't mean that it's not a good series."

The follow-up question is whether the size of the audience for what little remains of the playoffs truly matters. If it does, it would seem to matter this year more than most.

Once a new collective-bargaining agreement was reached last summer, the league reintroduced itself with rule changes designed to add goals and subtract whistles. It worked; goals increased by one a game, to an average of 6.1, and the faster-paced game helped produce per-game and season-long attendance records for the league. Any initial debate about the worthiness of the on-ice changes quickly melted.

Some of the league's glossier teams, forced to shed payroll and talent, missed the playoffs. Most of the rest — the Rangers, Detroit Red Wings, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, Philadelphia Flyers and Montreal Canadiens among them — were dismissed in the first round. After the second round, all the franchises that had won the previous 14 Stanley Cups had been eliminated.

The final four teams feature similar mixes of youth and speed, moxie and hot goaltending — but no transcendental stars. Carolina center Eric Staal, an emerging talent but not a household name, was the only player in the conference finals among the league's top 12 point scorers in the regular season.

Three of the final four teams — Buffalo, Carolina and Anaheim — have never won a Stanley Cup and started goalies who had never played in an N.H.L. postseason until this season. Like the Oilers, they had long struggled to retain core players, who gradually became too good to be afforded in a league where, until last summer, some teams had a payroll triple that of others.

"While the playing field is not level, it's an awful lot better than what the conditions were that we were under before," Sabres General Manager Darcy Regier said.

The conference finals have provided quick proof that the N.H.L.'s best intentions have been realized. It is a victory for parity, a loss for name recognition. A good sign for the future, if not a good time for the present.

"It's working as intended," said Jason Kay, the editor of The Hockey News, a publication based in Toronto that is regarded as a must-read for the hockey obsessed. He mulled a question about whether proof of the small-market boost outweighed the flash of, say, a Red Wings-Maple Leafs Stanley Cup finals.

"I have mixed emotions; there are plusses and minuses," he said. "But I think it's good for the game."

That is Bettman's belief, too, and he seems relatively unconcerned about this year's low television ratings. Playoff games have been outdrawn by poker, women's college gymnastics and the Arena Football League. Among nonsports cable shows, N.H.L. games are being crushed by "SpongeBob SquarePants."

Hockey's ratings have been slipping for years, and have fallen harder this season, the first with NBC and OLN as broadcast partners. NBC's regular-season and postseason audiences are about half the size of those that Fox attracted 10 years ago, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. OLN, which succeeded ESPN as the league's primary United States cable partner, is a growing network.

"When it comes to dealing with the structure and stability of our business, we've shown patience, and we did that so we can achieve the right result," Bettman said. "And on TV I think patience is also required. But, finally, we're headed down the road in the right direction."

With mostly small, concentrated fan bases surrounding each N.H.L. team, few matchups in the final round likely would substantially lift the sport's buzz quotient.

"I know I'm not supposed to say this, because from a league point of view it doesn't sound right, but the fact of the matter is, when you get to June, most of the interest is driven by your own markets," Rutherford said. "That's just it. Unless Detroit or the New York Rangers get in, or maybe Colorado, and then a Canadian team, any Canadian team, that's just the way it is."

In Detroit, which markets itself as Hockeytown, the Red Wings had the N.H.L.'s best regular-season record, but were bumped in the postseason's first round. Any lingering hockey buzz there has been smothered by the postseason success of the N.B.A.'s Pistons and the surprisingly quick start of baseball's Tigers, said Gene Myers, the sports editor of The Detroit Free Press.

"This is Hockeytown, but in some ways that's a misnomer," Myers said. "This is really Red Wings-town."

He said that articles about the Stanley Cup finals, especially with little-known teams, might not routinely make it to the front page of the sports section of Hockeytown's largest newspaper.

With financial security, the N.H.L. is back to where it has been for years, if not decades — trying to create excitement in all corners of the North American sports landscape. It will not happen in the coming weeks. If it comes at all, it will take years, and it will start at places like HSBC Arena, in cities like Buffalo.

Before Game 3, outside the arena near a stable of satellite trucks, a rock band on a stage finished its set with "I've Got Friends in Low Places," then the "Cheers" theme song, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." A mob of fans in full Sabres regalia sang along. A few sucked beer through tubes attached to a fake Stanley Cup-cum-beer bong. Inside the arena's foyer, a "Let's Go, Buffalo" chant built to a crescendo.

The party is here. Can you feel it?