Do you know that they are still playing hockey? You're in a minority if you do. Game one of the Stanley Cup finals had the misfortune to be matched against Game one of the NBA finals and came out the worse for it in viewership on the electronic TV machine. The lack of "Big City" teams is also being cited as excuse. San Jose and Pittsburgh are the contestants. Astute pageviewership note the near identity of those franchise locales with those of the NBA Final Two, Oakland and Cleveland so that's just stupid. Pittsburgh is a glamour franchise in the NHL, winner of three Stanley Cups since the 1990's with universally recognized superstars Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby. The NHL's ratings nightmare is to have a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup finals, if they had two, say Montreal and Edmonton, they'd drink the purple Kool-Aid. The NHL's nightmare is not venerated Pittsburgh and so-cool Silicon Valley.

 Hockey is a terrible sport for television and June is a terrible month to be playing it.