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Imrem: Blackhawks, NHL need more help from ESPN

ESPN can be blamed for anything and everything, so let's blame the network for this, too.

We're talking about the NBA Finals being more popular than the NHL Final on American television.

The games in both series have been compelling. So were the storylines. So were the leading characters.

Everything is nearly equal between the two until TV ratings are announced: As usual, basketball far outdraws hockey.

If it weren't for the Blackhawks' popularity, locally and nationally, the disparity would be even more pronounced.

It's almost as if hockey is Chicago's little secret.

Sports fans in the United States who are missing the Hawks-Lightning series don't know what they're missing.

NBC needed the Hawks to carry the network during the Stanley Cup Final, and our town is delivering.

One estimate is that something like a quarter of the Stanley Cup Final national audience is comprised of Chicago households.

NBC proclaims that Stanley Cup Final ratings are setting records, but they aren't nearly to the level of the record NBA Finals ratings on ABC.

The NBA postseason was mostly a snore until the first two games of the Cavaliers-Warriors series went into overtime and Cavs' injuries manufactured high drama starring superstar LeBron James.

Hockey's playoffs - from beginning to end, first puck drop of the first game of the first round to Saturday night's Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final - have been as compelling as imaginable.

This isn't meant to denigrate the NBA. Basketball players are considered the world's greatest athletes and generally live up to the billing.

But NHL players are remarkably athletic, too, and perform their remarkable feats on a slippery surface. The Final has been like a perpetual fastbreak on skates.

Does America prefer the NBA to the NHL because hockey still is considered foreign? Are the rules still difficult to grasp? Is the puck still hard to follow on TV?

No, no and no.

Hockey, after all these years, is as American as Taylor Swift; our public-education system is shaky, but we're still smart enough to understand that when lines change on the fly players aren't going from boxers to briefs; even Stevie Wonder can follow the puck on a high-def TV.

Something else must be at work here.

Is it that most kids don't grow up playing hockey? Is it that NBA players are more recognizable because they don't wear helmets or grow playoff beards? Is it because hockey doesn't get much attention on ESPN?

No, no and … finally, yes.

The NHL is pretty much the only major sport that ESPN doesn't exploit for programming and it's difficult for a league to be all it can be without a footprint on the self-proclaimed worldwide leader.

The big thing isn't the games. It's all the promotional time the sport receives leading up to the games.

If ESPN is carrying a soccer tournament, it feeds you everything you need to know about the players, their families and their dogs' names.

With the NHL playoffs, ESPN provides a dose of Barry Melrose before breaking away to the fourth in a series on Golden State guard Steph Curry's cute little daughter.

Combine all those other factors with the ESPN void and the result is far more viewers tuning into the NBA playoffs than to the NHL playoffs.

If hockey indeed is Chicago's little secret, that's the rest of the country's problem.

But it would be kind of nice to show off the Blackhawks to a larger chunk of the nation.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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