Word: sporting
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This is not the time to fight with your boss. but after more than a decade as TIME's hockey-beat writer, a job I wrestled from no one, my editor, Josh Tyrangiel, has refused to hear any more of my hockey-story pitches, arguing that the sport is not relevant enough to be in a mass-circulation magazine. "Like most people in America, in my daily life I'm much more likely to kick something or throw something in a basket than I am to put on ice skates," Josh says. "I'm actually more likely to tackle somebody...
...Josh yelled that I could write one more column about hockey during this incredibly exciting playoff season, but it had better make a convincing argument about how excellent hockey is. If I failed to convince, TIME.com readers could vote to bar me for life from ever referring to the sport again (vote below). Therefore, this is the most important column I'll ever write. Unless, of course, you vote to keep the hockey pieces coming, in which case there's a super-important column I'm planning about further reductions in goalie leg-pad sizes. (See the top 10 sports...
...cause, director Kevin Smith argued that hockey has "Heroes! Villains! Costumes! Masks! Fights! It's a comic book come to life ... at any moment, someone might try to punch someone else in the face!" Oddly, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was less effusive. When I asked him to sell his sport, he pointed out, "The players all grow playoff beards. It's their commitment to the cause, the bond of the team." But Bettman did add that anyone who watches "Washington play Pittsburgh and sees Ovechkin play Crosby" will catch hockey fever. When I e-mailed this to Josh, he responded...
...this working? Because I haven't even mentioned the fact that the NHL will let me do things no sport that doesn't involve animals will. I've played goalie at a New York Islanders practice even though I can't skate. I've brought the Stanley Cup to a pawnshop. The league has even offered to let me be commissioner for a day. When I pitched that last idea, Josh said, "If the NHL would let you be commissioner for a year, we'd have something. Because then you'd change that stupid sport...
...hockey skate into this mess? Coming out of the 2004-05 lockout, Versus outbid ESPN for rights to hockey games. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman chose cash over the increased exposure any sport gets from ESPN, which is currently in 98 million homes. While the game has gotten better - new rules have increased scoring, and phenoms like Ovechkin and Crosby have given the game new blood - Bettman lost a mainstream audience to which he could market this improved product. So while Ovechkin-Crosby plays out in the wilderness, Bettman should wonder what might have been. (See TIME's picks...