How do we fix the first week of the season?
My creative friends in and around the NHL offer ideas to make opening week more eventful.
If we’re being completely honest, which we at The Civ Report (me and my editor, a tuxedo cat named Crab Rangoon), tend to be, the NHL is the most mockable of the big four sports leagues. This is a multi-faceted “issue,” but the “issue” is more like a meta joke that hockey fans are totally in on. We don’t really care if you like our sport, we like it just fine, Fall Out Boy concert at every All-Star Game for the past 20 years and all.
It should come as no surprise to you, though, that as of 2024, the NHL ranked fifth among professional sports teams with a reported $6.4 billion in revenue.
We can’t gloss over the more serious realities that contribute to the NHL’s popularity problem: lack of diversity, lack of accessibility, lack of player agency, problematic labor practices, a commissioner who refuses to acknowledge CTE’s correlation with head injuries.
But we’ve been fighting a concurrent battle from a marketing and entertainment standpoint. Why does hockey still kinda feel like an awesome secret, and how do we make everything surrounding the best sport in the world just as fun as the sport itself?
The NHL isn’t going to become the popular kid in town overnight, but we’ve already seen some gigantic strides in viewership, revenue, and overall vibes since ESPN and TNT became the U.S. rights-holders. ESPN’s involvement means we can actually, like, find the freaking games and watch them. Plus, there have been some successful promotional nights like the “Red Zone” adjacent Frozen Frenzy and the adorable Big City Greens Classic. Meanwhile, TNT’s panel gives us some much-needed PG-13 levity. Amazon Prime’s ‘Face-Off: inside the NHL’ docuseries was incredible, and I’m excited to see where the expanded partnership between Amazon and the NHL goes.
I’ve also noticed players showing more personality, and it seems organic — which hasn’t always been the case. Maybe I just love Gen Z, maybe I love Connor McDavid finally feeling empowered enough to stand for something, or maybe the rising cap and better contracts have fostered a healthier sense of individuality and agency among the laborers who put their bodies on the line for our entertainment every night. Maybe I’m just overthinking it, and I really just love a player on the snootiest team in the league wearing a suit with ‘FU’ written in the pinstripes.
Whatever, what was the point of all of this again? Hockey is the best sport that has had some of the worst marketing, but things are looking up lately.
With all of the positive change on the horizon, I was expecting some more hype surrounding the first week of the season. Like many of you, I was underwhelmed by the rollout, especially the decision to start the regular season in the middle of the day on the other side of the world as the preseason was literally still happening.
The group chat, which you can join by clicking the button above, was buzzing with this collective sense of underwhelm. Too Many Men podcast co-host and CEO of ranting Shayna Goldman also raised “complaints about the vibes” on this week’s episode, but then she did something crazy — she offered a solution.
“It just feels like the NHL needs a SPLASH with a big market to get the conversation started,” Goldman expanded via text. “And then the obvious staggering days and times better. Love the soft launch of three spaced out games on Day 1, but give me more. Give me something to feel The Passion about off the bat.”
*Carrie Bradshaw if she was even more annoying voice*: Goldman’s rant had me thinking. What if I asked a few more talented, braincell-oozing friends how they’d tweak the first week of the NHL season?