Friday, January 25th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
The Penguins should start learning Swedish
The NHL announced that the Penguins, in their official role as The Team the NHL Uses to Promote the Sport Whenever It Needs a Team To Promote the Sport, are going to open next season in Stockholm, Sweden against the Ottawa Senators. The matchup will likely be between two Eastern Conference heavyweights, but the games are not at all going to be about the hockey.
Instead, the idea behind the promotion is to actively promote the sport in foreign markets. There have been discussions about a European SuperLeague that, if formed, could heavily draw away from the NHL’s talent pool and represent the first legitimate threat to an established American sport league from a foreign market. The NHL has to be aware of this and, as such, has to want Europeans to develop some attachment to its team and its stars.
The NHL also has to be aware that the countries it should be most worried about are
those like Sweden and Finland and the Czech Republic, countries that do not have a strong domestic league and, therefore, basically serve as feeders to the NHL. Gary Bettman and his cronies realize that the Russian SuperLeague is the second-strongest in the world and has the power to be an even larger thorn in the NHL’s side than it already is (Anyone remember Evgeni Malkin having to flee the team hotel in the dead of night in order to escape a contract that he was forced to sign?). The NHL needs to establish a significant presence in these smaller countries so that a European SuperLeague never seems like a legitimate idea for them.
This is much more than just another publicity stunt for the NHL.
Sidney Crosby, of course, is The Kid, the star that the NHL has chosen as its face and 
rightfully so. He has teammates, however, such as Malkin and Sergei Gonchar who could help boost the Penguins’ status in Europe. That would be a huge boost to the NHL, as the Penguins could quickly become the Dallas Cowboys of hockey, rooted for by many and hated by some (see: Flyers fans) and, as such, could help ensure the league’s global superiority.
In the meantime, someone needs to get Crosby a How to Learn Swedish tape to listen to during his rehab so that he can be as smooth with the Swiss reporters as he is with the Americans (There is absolutely no chance that Malkin will learn Swedish. He has not even learned English, so I’m not going to go there).
At least the publicity stunt will take place under a roof this time.
Leave a Reply