Youth is not being wasted on the Young Guns in The NHL this season. Auston Matthews And Connor McDavid Are The New Faces. But Is It Best That They Are Playing For Candian Teams? Adrian Dater Explains
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BY ADRIAN DATER
@adater
The old face of the NHL, if it were a composite sketch, was something like: Mustache, sideburns, pock-marks and missing teeth. The new face of the NHL: Peach fuzz, maybe a little acne and don’t forget to ask for ID.
On the Nashville Predators, the average age is a little more than 24. Of the 23 players on the roster, four are over 30. Only three players on the team are married with kids. Of the 20 top scorers in the NHL entering Thursday, just three (Shea Weber, Joe Pavelski and Evgeni Malkin) are 30 or older.
AUSTON MATTHEWS, TORONTO’S TERRIFIC TYKE
The NHL’s best-selling jersey on its online store last month was that of 19-year-old Toronto rookie Auston Matthews, a native of that hockey hotbed, Scottsdale, Ariz., a player who scored four goals in his first career game. One of the other top-selling jerseys is that of No. 97 of the Edmonton Oilers, 19-year-old Connor McDavid.
So, the future of the NHL is bright, right? Their best players are some of their youngest players, and many more behind them are just getting out of junior high.
As we discussed in an earlier column here, not necessarily. While it can’t be disputed that it’s a good thing that hockey is becoming younger and faster, with a player (McDavid) already being talked about as the fastest skater in league history, there are still plenty of worrisome things when it comes to the popularity of the sport, especially in the U.S.
Some include:
CONNOR MCDAVID, THE OILERS’ KID DYANAMO
– McDavid and Matthews both play for Canadian teams. That’s great for the good people north of the border, who have always cared more about the sport than us Americans, but it’s usually not great for American network TV ratings.
Then again, not many things are great for American U.S. network TV ratings. The Pittsburgh Penguins were in the Stanley Cup Finals last spring, with the sport’s biggest household name, Sidney Crosby, in action. And still, the ratings were trounced by the NBA Finals.
– McDavid and Matthews both seem like great kids (I’ve talked to both, and they respect their elders and would make Emily Post proud with their manners). But they are like most every hockey player: They’re nice, but boring interviews. The hockey way still is: It’s about the team, not individuals. That endears the sport to many, but it doesn’t sell newspapers, it doesn’t generate huge clicks and it doesn’t get ratings much better on TV than your average rerun of Seinfeld.
– The young players are really good, but it’s still really hard to score goals in the sport. Actually, scoring is up a bit over last season, but even the leading scorers like McDavid and Matthews can barely average a point or a bit better than that. Wayne Gretzky scored 215 points in one season once as a very young guy. If either Matthews or McDavid gets 100 or more this year, it will be a surprise.
Fans are OK with low-scoring games in the playoffs, but when too many regular-season games are producing six goals or fewer, it’s not good.
But let’s finish up here by accentuating some positives. The fact is, the NHL was full of too many old, slow, overpaid guys 10-20 years ago. The sport is soooo much faster than it once was. McDavid is genuinely a generational talent. My old pal Scotty Bowman, 82 years young and as sharp about the game today as he ever was, said McDavid has the fastest “acceleration” speed from a dead stop as any player he’s seen since Bobby Orr.
Matthews is genuine proof that the NHL’s expansion into the West, Southwest and South has paid at least some dividends. He grew up learning the game in Arizona, going to Coyotes games, not at some fancy hockey academy in Canada. He figures to inspire other kids there and other warm-weather cities, and nobody can complain about that.
The future of the NHL may be shaky in some things, but one thing seems for sure right now: The kids are alright.
-30-
(Adrian Date
r is one of North America’s premier hockey writers. The Barre, Vt., native grew partially in a Vermont commune. As a child living in a teepee, Adrian became, and remains, a Boston sports addict, although “”I realized several years ago I was one of those Boston transplant asses always pining for the good ol’ days. Now I consider myself a Coloradan.” Dater has covered sports — particularly hockey, the Colorado Avalanche, the National Hockey League and the Stanley Cup Finals — for 28 years for the Concord Monitor, The Denver Post, SI.com, The Hockey News, The Sporting News and, currently, Bleacher Report and woodypaige.com.)