Who Cares About Hockey?
Tuesday 20 June 2006
Here’s a scary indicator of New York’s blase attitude towards hockey when a NYC metro area team is not in contention. Both the Post and the News relegated the Cup to an “oh yeah, by the way, the Hurricanes won” note at the top. In all fairness, the News gave a full-width banner to Stanley Cup, whereas the Post gave it a one-third width corner at the top right of the back page.
The Post went with more griping about Mickelson’s showboat/piss-poor performance at the Open. The News devoted the back page to the Ugliest Man In Baseball’s mid-season, pre-All Star Break loss that will mean nothing in September (really, June losses for the Yankees are meaningless).
One would think that there would be a big back page photo of the
Whalers – err – I mean Canes, hoisting the Cup, skating around victorious, drinking beer from the Cup, puking in the Cup, etc. You know, the sort of Stanley Cup jackassery that hockey fans have come to expect and love. Nope. Just an “in other news” mention on the back page.
Is this backlash from the lockout/strike? Does New York City, as a whole, just not care about hockey the way it cares about baseball and football? Or are NYC hockey fans just fairweather fans?
