by Matt Barr

Commissioner, Schmomissioner

You decide. Anyway, as NASCAR, a "regional sport," gains fans nationwide, with races drifting north after the people in those areas start to get jazzed about it, doesn't Gary Bettman's strategy to plunk teams in tropical climes against the locals' will look even more idiotic? Hockey is the ultimate "regional sport," which could, with a marketing plan that wasn't written in smeared booger, have caught on to national TV audiences without there being a local NHL team.

Bettman went sort of the other way. The long-suffering fans of Tampa Bay got their Stanley Cup and Phoenix got the pro team it lacked and craved, but the league overextended itself, counting on the influx of players with too many or too few vowels to beef up the talent base. I don't think it's ethnically insensitive to point out that it's hard for the casual North American observer to be enraptured by the exploits of Vasily Yzmyzniizkopf.

And Vasily turned out not to be any damn good, anyway, and the quality of play dropped precipitously, as coaches found it easier to teach a bunch of lumbering oafs how to hook and hold than to pass and shoot. Meanwhile, as the NHL wooed the American south and west, fewer and fewer Canadian and northern American kids thought it worthwhile to devote their lives to the sport. Which takes a level of commitment simply not found in the pursuit of others.

And none of this is going to immediately or easily get better, either.

Great job, Count.

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