There’s no doubt that this has not been the summer of love for the National Hockey League and hockey fans everywhere. Though it may be news to most of you, pro hockey has been plagued by death, suicide and large-scale tragedy in the last few months.
I, for one, thought that this woeful NHL offseason could generate outward sympathy from people who usually don’t follow the sport. But there has been very little support. Any compassion from the media, measurable in its meager headlines, has simply slipped through the public’s grasp.
It’s no secret that the American media gives greater leverage to the celebrity. Take Alex Rodriguez or Tiger Woods. They’ve become who they are, not only because they make hundreds of millions of dollars or have interesting personalities, but because the media gives us exclusive insight into these athletes’ personal lives.
Celebrities like these in hockey are, not surprisingly, few and far between. Like the National Football League — an organization which garners enormous media coverage — the NHL has a financial cap that limits how much a team can spend per year. But there is a huge difference in the amount of coverage between these two sports and the difference in each league’s definition of celebrity.
SportsCenter will report a breaking news story when Houston Texans running back Arian Foster tweets a picture of his MRI result, but when NHL players Rick Rypien, Tom Cavanagh and Wade Belak die by unconfirmed suicide — and at least six current and former NHL players perish in a plane crash carrying a professional Russian team — ESPN may not even commit more than a brief segment to the tragedy.
What is surprising is that the media will disregard an intriguing news story just because the sport in which the player is involved isn’t as popular. Derek Boogard, former tough guy for the New York Rangers, passed away in May of this year. His death, caused by an accidental oxycodone overdose, was barely heard about past the New York border.
This is a tragic and compelling story. His parents donated his brain to the Sports Legacy Institute in order to contribute to a Boston University study of brains of athletes in high-contact sports. At the very least, this story would grasp the attention of any fans that have seen the film “Young Frankenstein.”
But in reality, this kind of story gets placed on the back burner. The story’s affiliation with the NHL, even in a big market like New York, gets little attention.
Any reasonable sports fan will tell you that there is an imbalance in sports coverage from one pro sport to another. Opinions do differ. A baseball fanatic could say that every October there’s too much hype over the start of the basketball season instead of the MLB playoffs.
But when it comes to imbalance over reporting tragedy in sports, there should be no bias. There is no moral excuse for reporting one athlete’s success while leaving out another’s demise.
It’s fair to place most of the blame on the sports reporters who decide what makes the daily news. But as fans of any sport, it’s our moral duty to rate the impact of the stories we read individually.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s hockey, lacrosse, volleyball or even soccer. Just because we hear that A-Rod allegedly played in a game of high-stakes poker with rounder Matt Damon doesn’t mean he’s a criminal, or that it even matters. We have to judge stories not based on the attention they initially receive, but rather on their impact.
The NHL suffered deeply on two fronts this summer. Not only did they lose almost a dozen former and current players, they learned that the public’s tendency to sympathize with their losses is depressingly small.