Questions Around The League
By Bob Grove

Will fans return?

This is the mother of all questions for the NHL in October, 2005. The league attracted 20.35 million fans during its last season, its second consecutive drop and its lowest total since becoming a 30-team league in 2000-01. Only once in its history (1976-79) has NHL attendance dropped in three consecutive seasons. By promoting a more level financial environment with a salary cap and a more exciting game with a plethora of new rules, the first major professional league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute hopes to win back disenfranchised fans. But how will it play in newer markets like Carolina, Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta and Anaheim? Just as importantly, will it reawaken weak major markets like Chicago and Long Island? With little TV money in hand and less national TV exposure than it’s had in many years, the league will depend more than ever on fans buying tickets.

Will the new rules really open up the game?

The redistribution of skilled players prompted by the salary cap promises to erode the play-it-safe mindset of many coaches and set the stage for substantive change. The reintroduction of tag-up offside, enlargement of the attacking zone by four feet, elimination of the red line for two-line passes and modest reductions in the size of goaltenders’ equipment and restrictions on where they can handle the puck certainly should skew the game toward offense. But if referees fail to follow through with yet another promised crackdown on obstruction, the benefits of these initiatives will be compromised. Will interference in the first period of an October game be interference in the third period of a late March game?

Will the Penguins’ high hopes be undercut by injuries?

Mario Lemieux’s dogged determination to stay in shape in recent years has been impressive. Now if the 40-year-old could only stop the aging process. So much of the Penguins’ potential is wrapped up in the notion of Lemieux and Sidney Crosby operating nightly on their own special wavelength, but it will only take one injury to jam the signal that looks so good on paper. John LeClair can bring a lot to the team on and off the ice if his wonky back cooperates, and you have to wonder whether chronic shoulder problems will again overshadow the gritty character of stay-at-home defenseman Josef Melichar.