They say it takes twenty one days to form a habit. Good or bad. I am the parent of two young boys. One age seven and the other one is four. My seven year old played hockey last year. He decided not to play this year. He however is a big hockey fan. We watch hockey on TV when ever it is on. He is always asking to stay up to watch the game. His regular bedtime is 8pm. This does not do him very well. He gets to watch the first period and the second period usually starts right when it is his bedtime. My wife and I are not interested in having him stay up late on school nights when there is a game on T.V. I have done what many Canadians have done before my. They turned to Hockey night in Canada for help. The great thing about Hockey night in Canada is that it happens on a Saturday. Not a school night. This allows me to let my son stay up late passed his bedtime to watch the hockey game. I remember spending many a Saturday nights watching hockey with my dad and older brother. This is turning into more fun than I thought it would be for me. My son gets very involved in watching the game and we enjoy a couple of hours spending time together.
What I do not understand is the NHL thought process here. Hockey night in Canada has become a tradition in Canada over the past fifty or sixty years. The funny thing about traditions is that they have to start somewhere. I am pretty sure that CBC did not choose to put hockey on Saturday night in Canada because they thought it was going to become this great tradition fifty years down the road. They put hockey on T.V. on Saturday because that is when the league was playing the games. Why is the NHL reluctant to put Hockey on the American channels on Saturday night? They say that no one will watch it on Saturdays in the US. I have relative in living in Seattle. There is nothing on TV in the US on Saturday night. This would be a great opportunity for the NHL to develop a new generation of fans in the US. They keep talking about trying to grow the game in the US. I am a hockey fan today because of the many Saturday nights spent watching hockey as a kid. When my son reaches the age of seventeen he will have spent ten years watching hockey on Saturdays. By then he will be a hockey fan for life. In three years he will be a fan for life. I am sure if the NHL did the same thing in the US ten or fifteen years from now, the kids watching the games with there dads or parents will be fans for life. If the NHL wants to grow the game in the US do not reinvent the puck copy it. Put a game on a national network on Saturday night in the US. Make the broadcast kid friendly so they tell there parent that is what they should be watching.
Wake up and smell the coffee Gary.
Puckhead
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