NHL back from the brink - for now

By Mark Barden

NHL heading for precipice

When a team gets to hold onto a major trophy for successive seasons, it's usually seen as a good thing for them.

But not in the case of Stanley Cup holders Tampa Bay, whose extended tenure as NHL champions has been little short of a disaster for the franchise.

The Lightning were denied the chance to defend the title they won in June 2004 by the long-running NHL lockout, which has finally been ended after 10 months.

Team owners cut off relations with - and the salaries of - their players after the two sides failed to come up with a new collective bargaining agreement to replace the one which expired last September.

NHL deal ends lockout

It has taken no less than 82 negotiating sessions between the NHL and NHL Players' Union to come up with a new deal, and the relief which has greeted it is mixed with fears over the sport's future.

Hockey is king in Canada, where Lord Stanley's wedding cake of a trophy is viewed as sport's true Holy Grail.

But it trails a very distant fourth in importance to the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball in North America as a whole.

By the time, the 2005-06 season begins in October, it will be almost 14 months since a puck was last struck in anger in the NHL.

We realise that this did a lot of damage to our game and we have a lot of rebuilding to do Detroit Red Wings forward Kris Draper

In fact, the NHL became the only major professional league in North America to ever lose an entire season to a labour dispute.

But outside of Canada and a handful of hockey heartland cities in the northern United States, it could be argued that the NHL has been barely missed.

Sure, the play-offs and Stanley Cup finals get their share of attention, but it is dwarfed by the interest generated by the climax of the NBA season which happens at roughly the same time.

No-one doubts hockey will recover and draw healthy crowds again in those areas where it has always had a strong following.

But for teams like Tampa Bay, playing in places where hockey has little, if any, tradition, the future could be a whole lot bleaker.

The Lighting had been existence just 12 years when they won their first Stanley Cup and will be lucky to be around for another 12 if the fans don't return this autumn.

NHL - TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT? American network ESPN asked 106,000 viewers whether they cared about the NHL lockout and 64% answered "no"

Baseball had a lot of trouble winning back its disillusioned fans after the 1994 strike which meant there was no World Series that season.

Ice hockey will have it just as hard - if not harder.

"We realise that this did a lot of damage to our game and we have a lot of rebuilding to do," admitted Detroit Red Wings forward Kris Draper.

Details of the NHL's new labour agreement will be revealed next week.

But having finally got the kind of salary cap deal they were after, the team owners should woo supporters with cut-price ticket deals and redouble their efforts to forge and maintain community links.

Have your say: Is the NHL's future bright or bleak?

If they don't, the concessions made on both sides to reach a new deal on pay, conditions of contract and all those other things the fans don't really care about - they care about hockey - may turn out to have been the last throes of the NHL in its present form.