Missed Opportunity

The NHL is a league of missed opportunities.  Most recently, the league decided to follow up a Los Angeles Stanley Cup victory - and the chance to boost the popularity of the sport in the country's second-largest market - with a near-season-ending lockout, once again damaging the NHL brand and slowing the momentum created by the Kings.  This is far from the first time the NHL has dropped the ball (or puck) on an opportunity to boost league popularity.  Earlier today, the Calgary Flames traded forward Jarome Iginla to the Pittsburgh Penguins, which got me thinking about one of the league's most underrated and un-talked-about screw-ups.

For those of you that don't watch hockey (or have forgotten), Iginla was one of the NHL's best and most dynamic players during the 2000s.  He led the NHL in points with 96 in 2001-02 (and was league MVP), and topped the 90 point mark again in 2006-07 and 2007-08.  He scored 50 goals in a season twice, led the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals (they lost to Tampa Bay in one of the least watched NHL finales in league history) and Team Canada to the 2002 Olympic gold and was incredible to watch.  Perhaps even more important from a marketing potential standpoint, however, is that Iginla is half black - his father was born in Nigeria.  In a league starving for racial diversity, the NHL had a bi-racial MVP and never used that to help market the game to a new (and growing) set of potential hockey fans.

Arguably the NHL's best minority player, Iginla languished in Calgary for 16 seasons.

People criticize the NBA for being overly star-driven and for marketing individuals as much as teams, and some of that criticism is fair.  At the same time, I've felt for a decade now that the NHL was doing itself a major disservice by refusing to use Iginla as a tool to grow the sport of hockey among minorities.  While the NBA has used players like Dirk Nowitzki to tap into Europe and Yao Ming to expand in China, not once have I heard about the NHL leveraging Iginla's notoriety and build its brand with non-white fans.  Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Iginla played for Calgary up until today; perhaps if he was on the Rangers, Kings or Capitals he would have been a bigger star and a role model for potential minority hockey players.  But I find it hard to believe that the NHL couldn't have done more to build Iginla's brand.

The NHL has a loyal fan base made of almost entirely of white males from Canada, the Northeastern U.S. or the Great Lakes region.  While other professional sports leagues have successfully expanded internationally (like the NBA), regionally (like the MLS) and culturally (like the NFL), hockey has remained stagnant and has failed to capitalize on opportunities to tap into new segments of sports fans.  As the USA continues to become more diverse and the percentage of Caucasian Americans continues to decrease, the NHL will likely struggle to grow.  Jarome Iginla could have been a key tool in helping professional hockey expand its reach.  Instead, the former MVP is now a 16-year veteran whose trade to Pittsburgh barely made the ESPN Headlines this afternoon.  Add Iginla's story to the long list of the NHL's missed opportunities.