Barry Zito’s Dirty Secret

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Whores and Gigolos, BZDS has its first official guest post by none other the Lone Ranger Hater… A Long Island transplant now obssessed with the materialism and surface elegance of the excessive Los Angeles lifestyle as well as his hometown Islanders.  Quite a paradox, no?

Periodically, he (hopefully) will be lending his artistic analysis of the NHL to the wonderful safe haven for seething sports commentary (and slander against oil-rich middle eastern nations that hate white people) that BZDS so fashionably represents.   Without further adieu, our first guest addition:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/attendance?year=2007

13,640.  That’s how many fans the New York Islanders averaged at the Nassau Mausoleum this year, good for last place in the NHL.  Wait, it gets better.  That’s an increase of nearly 800 fans per game from the ‘06-’07 campaign.  Yes, that’s pathetic.

Thankfully, since not everyone can make it to every game, we have a national television deal that, oh, right…it replaced long distance biking as the preferred programming of Versus, formerly the Outdoor Life Network.  Well, that’s OK. 

Even though some, particularly those living in the friendly, spacious confines of the Yukon Territory, would say it never left, I would argue chiefly and most importantly, that the NHL is back.  Sure, it’ll never reach MLB or NFL or maybe even NBA stature, but ALOT has changed since the last time you could talk about the Big Four.  When the Penguins played a road trip in Western Canada this season, the crowds treated Sid the Kid like John the Lennon.  And all six Canadian NHL teams sold out EVERY home game this season, so clearly, the focus of this treatise is solely on the state of the NHL in the good ol’ US of A.

Fom the obvious Crosby/Malkin duo in Pittsburgh and Ovechkin/Semin squad in Washington D.C. to the less known Anze Kopitar, Michael Cammaleri and Jack Johnson in Los Angeles, the new crop of NHLers play with an intensity and speed that, aided by the rule changes, has sped the game up considerably.  It’s not only more exciting to watch, but it will hopefully prove to be stimulating enough to lead American kids to take the game up for themselves.