NYIsles1*
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Respectfully, maybe you should research the history of hockey inicelanders said:The Rangers = NHL exposure in the USA, pure and simple. Those who are saying otherwise are just biased. I hope you find some happiness in your bias because it will not improve the standing of Hocky in society. I as an islander am biased against the Rangers. Living in the biggest sports city in the world it is impossible to ignore the facts. In 1 million years hockey will never beat out any of the other sports for unless its the Rangers.
this market. Instead of talking about bias convince me why I am wrong based on what I'm presenting here.
The Rangers were around long before 94 and went to several finals and semi-finals, I do not recall any articles claiming New York= NHL exposure in the US in those days, not even in 1979. You should also note the Devils came here based on the Islanders success in this market, the Rangers almost wound up in New Jersey ahead of them because of the property tax exemption they needed at the time to survive.
The history in this market from what I remember is any Islander regular season game could receive the back pages in Manhattan on any night against any team a long time ago. Hockey and it's season was religion here for both the Islanders and the Rangers with their finals against Boston and Chicago. There used to be a baseball off-season and more media interested in hockey players because they had more time and space to cover it. When the Islanders won the cup in was a huge New York sports story. The rivalry with Boston, Philadelphia were huge local news and the road games were on free television and reached everyone. Some want to talk about Hockey's peak being three weeks in 94, that was three teams providing a great show with Canada involved, there was a time here hockey did not need a peak because it that good all the time. Too many here are not old enough to have seen hockey's true sustained peak in this market. What some claim was 94's peak did not sustain itself past only a three month lockout.
There is a history in this market for hockey, a past history and a contemporary history and I respectfully think your ignoring both. The contemporary history is the New York Rangers with the some of highest payrolls and some of the greatest star individual talents in league history could not receive any attention during the regular season in this market whether they won or lost for over a decade even going to the
semi-finals.
Look at that names on those teams? Losing should have been even a bigger story than winning. The media was too busy covering baseball and the other major sports until they discovered they have so much baseball now they do not need hockey at all, why is what the television people discovered at Espn/Fox/Abc.
The Rangers, Islanders and Devils are down to their one beatwriter and one article most days, there is no longer any window to compete with baseball because it dominates the New York public interest and the media year-round. Only one hundred thousand homes tuned in on Msg-Fox on nights all three teams played. Ranger ratings for 82 games with a payroll near 80m? (0.75) Only die-hards like us seem to be left.
Islanders got a marginal bump during the Leafs series but little more. Hockey cannot compete with the baseball buzz in this market, from winter meetings to rumors to big games to exhibition season, that's the hockey market here and it's not changing anytime soon. The radio people will not talk about it, the television people want no part of it and the Mike Lupica's only acknowlege it when Bertuzzi-Moore happen to explain why he does not take it seriously.
That's the same Mike Lupica who called Nassau Coliseum, " Fort Neverlose".
The rivalry games used to get three days of hype beforehand, now the
Mets-Yankees and Red Sox own that hype in this market an Islander-Ranger-Devil game is barely acknowleged on gameday.
I cannot speak for the Devils but the same four people assigned to cover the Isles in the four local papers cover the Rangers, rarely is a second article written or a columnist provided to give opinion and when it is it's someone who knows little about hockey or it's players.icelanders said:There are 2 other Metro area teams that have great fan bases and they can barely get regular columns written on them.
Where was the buzz with all these other superstars, even Gretzky himself went to the Conference Finals as a Ranger. Tell me why on a daily basis a market with less star players and teams will not cover Crosby more when they have less to cover?icelanders said:And NO Crosby does not = sucess for the Rangers. What he does = is a big time PR coup. He will bring a huge "buzz" to the NY area..
You know the same media that will cover him in New York will be in Carolina when it comes to the press in Canada. They are going to follow him daily regardless of where he plays.
Do you live in this market? The Yankees and Mets own the back and front pages year round. The Giants, Jets, Knicks and Nets get the rest along with the event of the day Nationally. Do you see that the Yankee-Sox Preview (not game) got every backpage over the lock out ending here. Explain where all this Crosby coverage is coming from against this kind of competition in this sports market when seven million people off all-demographics attend baseball while one attends hockey?icelanders said:BTW it would be a great thing if the Rangers could get better quickly as their is a major opportunity to increase exposure while the Knicks arent getting the back pages.
Not even New York-New York World Series did that nationally so how can this be your point when it's not true. As we learned last November the Blue States do not control the country.icelanders said:Everyone loves small market teams who have sucess and overcome financial restraints. It was great when the Marlins beat the Yankees, San Antonio ousted LA in the playoffs a few years ago, and so on. The fact of the matter remains that the New York and to a lesser extent LA teams bring more to any league than any small market team and there is no way to even argue otherwise.