Hockey, it’s not just for Canada

I have been a fan of hockey for as long as I can remember. It is a sport that most people don't know much about, but this past  Sunday, everyone was a fan.

The gold medal game, U.S. versus Canada, was a game that united this nation and stirred passion for a sport that is often overlooked. When Zach Parise tied the game with 25 seconds left, I have never seen so many people yell and cheer for one team. It was all over Facebook — ‘GO USA!'

It was a short-lived moment, however, as Sidney Crosby scored the  gold-medal winning goal for Canada just eight minutes into overtime.

It was a game of ups and downs, with rarely a slow moment. This is what makes hockey great. The fate of a game can be changed with a small, simple deflection to send the puck into the back of the net.

This sport has more emotion than most TV dramas, yet it is one of the single most ignored sports because people don't understand it. They see fighting during a game, which has been cracked down on with new rules and regulations over the past year, and think it's a violent, terrible sport. This is not true; it is a rare thing to see a fight in a game. The players have respect for each other even if they fight.

With so much action and entertainment in a sport that can unify a nation, why is it fighting to stay alive in the NHL? Over the past two years, there have been major financial problems.

The Phoenix Coyotes have almost been rendered bankrupt. The team has had to look to the NHL commission for a bailout just to pay its already behind loans.

Phoenix isn't the only team in trouble.  The Atlanta Thrashers, Florida Panthers and New York Islanders have all been struggling in financial woes as well as having trouble with getting peak performance from their players. Attendance has been subprime for each of these teams despite spending big money to get key players to improve their teams.

The reason? People just simply do not care. If no one is attending, then those players don't perform to the next level and everyone loses. Is it the players' fault? Or is it the teams' and league's faults for this current failure?

If you look at the teams in the league struggling, most are in places where people have no interest in hockey to begin with. The commissioner, Gary Bettman, has done a poor job by keeping these teams in these areas. He stopped the sale of the Coyotes to only have them continue to struggle in a hopeless area.

The only solution to this problem is for people to take that same enthusiasm and general excitement of the gold medal game and apply it to the NHL's regular season, which took a two-week break for the Olympic games.

Almost all of the Canadian and American rosters were filled with players from the NHL. It's the same players, the same excitement of the Olympic games, except it happens multiple days a week and you don't have to travel to Vancouver to watch a game.

Michael Spurlock can be contacted at spurlock36@marshall.edu.