Playing Favorites

Bias is unavoidable. I don't have a problem with the NHL being a little uneven with how they treat the different teams. Unfortunately for the league, I have my limits.

Let me go back to 2005. The NHL lost an entire season. They also lost the draft for the year. They couldn't just bring the usual draft rules into play (although they could have come up with something similar).

One hot prospect, Sidney Crosby, was expected to go first. Everybody wanted him. With all the hype surrounding him, rumors started emerging. Since the success of the New York Rangers in 1994 worked wonders for the league's bottom line, I started reading about how the league would love for Crosby to play for the Rangers. Some rumors even claimed that the league was looking for a draft system favorable to that team.

The league claimed that it would be unfair to use the typical struggles of teams two years ago to reflect who needed the pick the most. Obviously, they also couldn't justify awarding the pick to a successful team that didn't need him. They came up with an odd mix of first round picks and playoff appearances determining the odds for a team to end up with Crosby. The Rangers, who have historically overspent for noncompetitive teams, were among the teams most likely to secure the first spot.

Obviously, the draft was not fixed. Crosby went to the Penguins instead of the Rangers. That doesn't mean that I approve of the league manipulating the odds in favor of teams that help their bottom line. I should also point out that my interest in watching Lemieux help Crosby develop his game was squashed by the media. They praised the fact that he would be playing in the east. Much like I don't want the league making decisions based on their most marketable teams, I don't want to see it from the media.

More recently, the league pushed through a realignment plan. Next season, there will be four divisions. The first is the Pacific Division. The second is the Central Division. Do you see a pattern? Divisions are based on geography. The third is the Metropolitan Division. This one deserves a little more explanation, but not much. This division is for the teams playing in the northeast. The final division is the Atlantic. Where does that fit in with the Metropolitan division? The Atlantic is for teams in the east outside of the northeast. In other words, Canada and Florida.

There is absolutely no question that the divisional realignment was designed to please fans of the northeast. The league threw together a flimsy argument for a Canada/Florida division: there are a lot of Canadians now living in Florida. I'm sure there are also a lot of people who came from the northeast. Not only that, but how do the Canadian teams benefit from this division? The reality is that the league was playing favorites, and the league was trying to justify it after the fact. Canadians in Florida had absolutely nothing to do with the realignment.

The media is even worse than the league when it comes to preferential treatment of marketable teams. Rather than detailing something so obvious that it could be considered common sense, I want to make my point. The league and the media should try to act in a neutral manner. While I accept a degree of bias, I do not approve of attempts to sway things in favor of the more marketable teams (particularly conscious attempts). This is a big part of the reason that I will not support any teams in the northeast, and this problem is not confined to hockey.