Stanley Cup Magic vs March Madness Upsets: Why NHL Playoffs Rule | Mac Engel | Engel Angle

On those days where I'm kind of feeling down and not good about myself because I haven't been right very often, I always think, you know, could be worse. I could be a weather forecaster. They're never right. Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Engel Angle podcast here on the Sunset Lounge, Stolen Water Media. Am I missing anybody? I don't know. I think that's it. It's springtime. Weather's turning nice, bit erratic. It's always a time for hopeful optimism that this time the weather's going to cooperate. And at least here in Texas, won't burn alive by June 1. Fingers crossed. Also, it's a busy time on the sports calendar and the time of year when the NBA and NHL playoffs are simultaneously battling it out for which one has the best postseason. And I thought about this a lot because it's something that I've said a lot to sports fans and people who are interested in going to games and events at these various places. I've done podcasts on that on sort of bucket list sports places. And there's one topic that I wanna talk about for this episode, and that is specifically the beauty of the NHL's Stanley Cup playoffs. Because I have said the following a lot, And I'm not the only one who has shared this sentiment of all of the post seasons that exist. Major league baseball, national football league, NBA, NHL, NCAA tournament, college football, college baseball world series. I'm sure I'm missing some others. The Stanley cup playoffs. That's the best playoffs there is. I believe that. And I have been fortunate to have attended or covered, covered all of the aforementioned post seasons. I've been to a world series, multiple world series. I've been to multiple super bowls, multiple NFL playoff games, NBA finals, NBA playoff games, college football playoffs, college football championship games, NCA final fours, NCA tournament games, college baseball playoffs, on and on. I've been very fortunate in my twenty five years of doing this, having attended and covered all of these different events and seeing them all up close and personal. And having attended multiple Stanley Cup finals and multiple playoff games over many, many years, I'm here to tell you that it is the best one with one tiny exception that is about ready to go away. But first, let me tell you why the Stanley Cup playoffs are better than all the other ones. Even though hockey by far and away is the least popular major sport in The United States. Not North America, The United States. Because if you've had the pleasure of ever traveled to Canada and turned on television and maybe casually come across a sports show, you will notice right away that the lead story is not anything other than hockey. Hockey still rules in Canada. And it was one of the big shocks to my system twenty plus years ago when I traveled to Canada for the first time when I covered the national hockey league in the Dallas stars, and I would turn on sports center. And the first ten to twelve minutes was all hockey, all national league hockey, junior league hockey, anything. Was all hockey. And it's still amazing to me that in all these years later, the Stanley Cup playoffs, as much as it is a religion in that country, that country has not won a Stanley Cup since 1993. Florida has more Stanley Cup championships in the last twenty plus years than the country of Canada, where the sport is born and where the sport is still worshipped. So you would say, well, gee whiz, that doesn't make any sense. How can a sport that is clearly fourth, probably fifth in The United States have the best post season? That that that does just doesn't add up. Well, me explain one thing about why hockey remains where it is in the rankings. And this has gone on forever, but it's I I've heard this debate and I've written about it. I've talked about it. I've experienced it. I've seen it, all that stuff. And hockey is great. It's phenomenal, but it remains despite the technological advances for watching anything in four HD and all this clarity that just blows you away. Hockey by far and away remains the worst sport to watch on television. Football's popularity exists today for two reasons. One, it's the easiest sport to bet on. Two, it's the best sport on television. As a TV product, football is the best by far. It fits in the screen better than the rest, including the NBA. Hockey, it moves too fast and the brilliance of the plays oftentimes are too quick for the naked eye to appreciate in real time. The beauty of hockey, the amazing skill in hockey, the brutality of hockey sometimes too often requires slow motion replay to see it and really appreciate it. That's not good for the game. Now I'm talking that as a marketable entertainment product, but the root of the, the root problem in hockey's popularity, why it's glacially slow compared to the other sports is because on the youth level, it is so incredibly expensive to play. Now we here in America have monetized youth sports better than any other nation on earth. That's why we exist to make money. That is why Americans exist. That is why America is what it is today. I do not care. I do not wanna hear about the pursuit of freedom of religion and the puritans and all this other stuff. No. This goes back to the Dutch when they grabbed Manhattan hundreds of years ago and turned the Island Of Manhattan into a capitalist Mecca. It was making money hand over fist. Everybody got along because everybody was trying to make money. That's why Great Britain invaded it, took it, and that's why we are where we are today. So we exist to sit there and monetize everything out of everything, including the exploitation of a bunch of eight year olds playing sports, whatever sport it is, because there's an opportunity to make money. I am depressed. And that is the biggest reason why hockey is where it is today, because it is too expensive for everybody to play. Just think about the surface to play on. All these other sports are expensive. They cost a lot of money to play, but nothing like hockey because just the surface to play on it, you gotta pay a lot of money to rent ice time. And that facility itself costs a lot of money. So the people who are running it have to charge a little bit more because of all the overhead that comes associated with running a facility where they freeze water. Do you know how expensive that is? Do you know how much stuff breaks in the maintenance? Ask anybody who has ever owned a swimming pool and they will tell you how expensive it is because all it does is break. So does a hockey rink. So now you've got to just that first item, the first item to play the game, you've got to pay something just to walk on the surface. Okay. Now you have eliminated tens of thousands of potential people who could potentially be drawn to want to play the game because they can't afford it. They haven't bought a glove. They haven't bought pads. They haven't bought sticks. They haven't bought a mask. They haven't bought a puck, nothing. Just to step on the surface. Now, if you include all those other costs just to dress up and play, you're looking at thousands of dollars to play the game. One game. There is your biggest reason why hockey remains where it is behind all those other sports. It doesn't play as well on television And it costs so much to play in as a as a kid. So all those people who would be playing it now, they've gone on to other things because even though there's other sports are expensive, it's not as expensive as hockey. So at least in this country, hockey, with us, so many other sports has become a sport of exclusivity. You gotta have money. Does anybody got a dime? I don't know. Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes. Right. You gotta have a lot of money to play this damn sport. So that is a contributing factor. So the other part to it is that hockey, as it relates to all those other sports that I mentioned is still behind in terms of its evolution because all those other sports and all those other leagues were way ahead in terms of becoming a part of the American sports lexicon before hockey became what it is today. Now to anybody who says hockey is small, nobody cares, nobody watches it. It's bullshit. Absolute disregard any of that argument. It's crazy. Hockey's fine. The national hockey league is fine. You have 32 teams and you have buildings of between seventeen and eighteen thousand that fill up consistently. That's fine. They have a national TV contract isn't nearly as lucrative as the other leagues, but it's still it's money. And they make a lot of money from gate revenue. And specifically where they really make their money is in the playoffs because the playoff game, you can charge more money. And the other part that they have going for them is that for some reason, in the last twenty five years, there's this notion that a Stanley cup playoff game is better than any other post season game out there. And they're not wrong about that. Like I said, with one exception, they're not wrong about that. And this is why. And this includes college football playoffs, the NFL playoffs, the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, NBA finals, major league baseball, the world series, etcetera. The passion of the fan for hockey is the equivalent of an NCAA college football fan. The difference is, whereas those fans are spread out over maybe 60,000, You've got all that intensity in a building that has a lid on it, literally, at 18,000. I recently went to a Dallas Stars Stanley Cup playoff game. And one of the first things I noticed, because when I go to games now, all I'm seeing is the the primary part that I'm seeing is, is this a good entertainment product? Is this bang for your buck? Are people happy? Are people into this? Do they think they're getting value for the considerable amount of money that they're spending to go watch that game? And the first thing I noticed when I walked into that game, how many people are wearing hockey jerseys? How many people are on hockey sweaters with their favorite player's name across the back? You don't see that on that level in any other sport. Now you see a decent amount. No. Not not like, I was gonna say, the National Football League. In in the football National Football League, you see a lot, but it's not like a hockey game. Now in the other places, you might see you see players or, pardon me, fans wearing their maybe a t shirt that says, you know, whether the Ohio State University or University of Texas or anything along those lines, but it's not a jersey. And a jersey is the most expensive piece of merchandise you can buy as a fan in terms of gear. When you walk into a hockey game, almost everybody's in a jersey. So there's one. Everybody's into it on a totally different level. Two, the chance of a playoff game going to overtime. The Stanley cup playoff overtime game is unlike anything else in sports because you've got the golden goal and the golden goal carries with it a weight that is unlike any other game by far. Because that one goal changes can change everything, not just a series. It can change the entire direction of a franchise. And when fans go to sporting events, what they want is weight. They want it to matter. It's one of the struggles that, that all of these leagues save for the national football league and college football is experiencing because there's just so many games now and all those that, that, that inventory, so to speak is competing against this thing. And this thing is undefeated because you can be entertained just sitting anywhere or distracted. Whereas now you've made a real investment to spend a night out and you want to watch something that you think matters. Well, a playoff game matters because there's only so many of them and it could completely change everything. One goal, one shot could change everything. February, December, everybody knows the score. It's another game. And they got 50 ahead of them. And a Stanley cup playoff game. Now I fully realize in those other playoff games, they carry with them the weight of elimination, potential elimination. But the other part that hockey has with it is contact. Contact, the boards, the fans, and the chance that fans are going to sit up next to the glass, boom, boom, boom, boom, pound on it. That's worth the money, by the way. I did that one time at a Dallas stars game several years ago. I sat in the corner and when those players rush into the corner and bang against the glass and you can hit your hand against the glass, That's an experience you can't do anywhere else in all those different sports that I mentioned. And the intensity of it is unlike anything else. And I've been to all of them. And all of them are great in their own way. A major league baseball playoff game, especially a World Series game, every pitch has so much potential importance, and that creates drama. The NFL, it goes without saying. Now the one thing I would say about that, the Super Bowl is not worth it. I'm gonna take go deviate down this road for a second. The Super Bowl has become too expensive. And even though they try to give you everything with pregame concert and halftime concert and all this other stuff, a thousand up 4,005 thousand dollars a ticket that has gotten outrageous. And I'm not sure if there was a New England Patriots fan who went to this most recent Super Bowl where they got blown out by the Seattle Seahawks in an absolute snore of a game. If anybody went there and thought, well, I'm sure glad I did this. That's you're looking at $8.10, $12,000 easy to go to that game. I'm talking hotels, flights, any of that stuff. Well, a Stanley Cup playoff game is the best because you've got that intimate atmosphere. You've got all these passionate fans, everybody wearing the same jersey, the chance of a fight or two, which fans love, collisions, elimination, a golden goal. And the other part that is totally different from the other sports is you don't question at all when you watch that game, whether or not those guys care. You hear stories all the time about guys playing with major injury because they want to win that game so badly. And that matters. And that's the kind of organic marketing that you can't, that you can't falsify because you find out later this guy was playing with a broken wrist and he taped it up. Or this guy was playing with a separated shoulder and they put it back in and then he came out and played. The I've hockey's loaded with stories like that. And that's one of the reasons why we we could sweep by into it so much. Plus, the other part too is unlike the unearned trophies that are passed around, none's better than the Stanley Cup. The Larry O'Brien trophy in the NBA. That's okay. That's kinda cool. The Vince Lombardi trophy. That's kinda neat. Stanley cup trophy. When the commissioner hands it to the captain after the series is over and he gets a chance to skate it around the ice. There's nothing else like that. And then he passes it off to a teammate, and he gets to hold it up and skate it around the ice and all the way around. And five times, the Stanley Cup champion at Edmonton has taken the Stanley Cup on behalf of the New York Rangers. And there he is. The Messiah has delivered. He's looking up at his family right now saying, can't believe it. And that comes before one of the coolest traditions in sports that only the Stanley Cup that that really is unique to the National Hockey League, and that is the handshake line. The old classmates. It's a beautiful moment. Even if even if maybe it's slightly contrived and even if maybe ever not every player loves it. Watching those players go through that. It is the quick moment that reminds you that brings you back to when you were a kid. And like I said, even even if it's forced, even if they don't love it, it's genius marketing sitting there watching those guys handshake, and you'll see certain players who know each other, or maybe it's another player's last game and they, they give him a hug and it's, it's long and it's a great moment. And there's no other sport that can do that. And so when for my money, when I've had this discussion with people and I say, hey, man, if you get a chance, a Stanley Cup playoff game is the best. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's the best one for all the reasons that I just mentioned. And the other ones are good, but the Stanley Cup playoffs one is the best postseason experience that I've ever had. And I implore you, if you haven't been to one, even if you don't even care, because even though hockey doesn't translate well on television, in person, it's the best one. Give it a minute or two. You'll learn the sport. It's just sports, not rocket science. It's not that complicated. And I guarantee you, you'll love that experience. And for my money, it remains the best playoffs, especially now because a valued and great postseason experience is about to change forever. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Well join the Sunset Lounge DFW and your dark companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. So I don't know if you follow the NCAA in the state of major college athletics, but in case you don't, that long standing amateur, quote, amateur organization continues to lose in court as whatever thought that we had of amateur athletics in college sports is pretty much dead as all the players are getting paid now and they're glorified annual free agents. And I have no idea if any of them are actually attending class in their effort to pursue a college degree exists. I have no idea. But I know this. The sport that made college sports, football, basketball in the seventies and eighties and nineties. Yeah. That's gone. It's gone forever. We now have major league sports played by college teams. I don't know if anybody, I don't know if it's going to deter the consumer from watching it. It doesn't look like that. And if there's one argument I continue to hear is it's dead, it's dead, it's dead. No, it's not. It has, it's a billion dollar industry. So any, any sport, any business that's generating a billion dollars in revenue. Yeah. I don't think that's dead. It has changed. And for people like me who grew up on the NCAA tournament or college football, we did in the eighties and fell in love with it the way it was back then, it's different. And if we're going to continue to watch it, we've got to deal with those changes and either we like it and we're okay with it or we don't. My money is that it'll continue to go on. Because there's such an addiction to watching these games that they can pretty much that it's almost a foolproof business model. They can butcher it, bastardize it, attack it. It doesn't matter. It's gonna continue to go on. And that includes the single most prop profitable property run by the NCAA. And that is the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which has been recently expanded to 60, pardon me, from 68 teams to 76 teams. Everybody's complaining about it because that's what we do. Because every time the NCAA tournament has expanded the men's basketball, pardon me, the NCAA has expanded its men's basketball fields from 16 to 32, 32 to 48, 48 to 64, 64 to 68. We've bitched about it. Oh, you're watering it down. You're neutering it. It's not the same anymore. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, we keep watching it and it keeps making money hand over fist. But there is one part to this that I will say that this expansion in all this different, all these different changes in college sports is going to do irrevocable damage to, and that was that is to what was the greatest postseason experience. And I'm talking about the March madness upset. We tell you once again, comes down to fundamentals. My goodness. Sorrentine hit that one from the parking lot. The March Madness upset was one of the most cherished, celebrated, enjoyable experiences in sports because it was the genuine upset. I'm talking about Northern Iowa beating Missouri in men's basketball or Northern Iowa beating Kansas in basketball. Abilene Christian upsetting Texas in basketball. Maryland, Baltimore County, a 16 seed upsetting Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Those those games almost more than any other. That's what made the NCAA tournament what it is today, which this monolithic massive bracket of games. It was the chance to see something that no other sports property really offered. And I'm talking about the upset, the underdog pulling it off. Because you can't really say in the national football league or major league baseball or any of those things that it's a really big upset. It is. Upsets are legitimate. And sometimes we've seen examples of that where the eight seed of the NBA stuns the number one seed in the first round. Doesn't happen much, and that's a bonafide upset. But they're all pros, and everybody's making millions of dollars. So even when the Golden State Warriors stunned the Dallas Mavericks in a first round series back in 2007, became the first eight seed to ever beat a one seed in a first round playoff series, that is a genuine upset. But again, if you look at the players on the floor, those are all badass NBA players. Those are all McDonald's high school all Americans. They were all big time college players. And, yes, it is an upset, and the Mavericks shouldn't have lost. However, everybody's making six and seven figures. Whereas if you go to the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, the disparity there is massive. And when you got to see games like that in person, it was the best postseason experience ever because everybody got into it. Everybody got into the story of watching Valparaiso come from behind to beat Ole Miss, an SEC team in the final second on a final shot, miracle shot thrown up by Bryce Drew at the gun, a game that lives forever. Because if that had been Maryland doing the same thing, it would have been a great shot, but it's not like Valparaiso or Butler University going to the final four and then the NCAA championship game in consecutive seasons. Butler, Butler beating Pitt, beating all these power conference teams that swim in money. Butler, tiny Butler from Indianapolis, Indiana. That's that's a storyline. That's a narrative you can really sink your teeth into. And when you're in the arena at the game, you can feel the momentum just almost swell into your body like, my god, they might actually do this. Like, what is going on? And you can all always feel the just the the weight of expectation pushing itself down on the high seed, on the big conference team, on UCLA thinking, my god. Why is this game against Princeton even close? We're UCLA. How are we not going to kick the living crap out of all of these nerds from Princeton? Those first two rounds are when those tournament upsets happen, and they were beautiful. Some of my most I I never ever fail to fall for the Cinderella team that gets that one win in the NCAA tournament. They're not gonna win six games to win the championship game, but they might win one. And that one win and that opening round game means everything to that school. They will cherish that experience for the rest of their lives because they weren't supposed to win it. I worked in a school like that. They don't, there's not a lot of money. I worked at Southwest, what was called Southwest Missouri state then it's Missouri state now. And at the time it was in the Missouri valley conference. And when you were in those schools and you went to those different athletic departments and you saw who was working there and how little money they made in the resources and the facilities and the media rights revenue, and it was nothing back then. It's worse even now compared to the power conference teams. And if for some reason, some reason they can win that game, it's a banner. It's an all time photograph. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And to me, I experienced that chance to win that game, to create that momentum in a building. That is what made the NCAA tournament what it is. The chance at a bonafide legit upset because rounds, oh, the sweet 16, the final eight, those are usually gonna sort themselves out usually. They're gonna be power conference teams. They're the same teams and power conference teams. It's basically Walmart versus target, target versus bank of America, bank of American versus McDonald's, McDonald's versus Goldman Sachs. You're just talking about thin margins of cash. But in those first round games, you're talking about huge differences. When you're man, they were the best. And that's why that experience of sitting in those arenas, the only thing that was better than a Stanley Cup playoff game was an early round NCAA tournament game with a low seed pulls it off. And I'm talking about a legit low seed. I'm talking about Texas, Arlington, South Alabama, Radford, Davidson, one of those schools, shocking Duke, shocking Virginia Tech, where the other team, the high seat just sits there and like, and the coach just looks overwhelmed by the humiliation that he's going to have to deal with when he gets back. Potentially losing their job because they've just lost to a team that has an operating budget of $8.36 However, this experience is going to be fading quickly if it isn't already gone already. Because what the NCAA is doing by increasing its field from 64 to 68 and now 76 teams is basically indirectly accommodating the big power conferences. The big power conferences that are in a gender, generally a threat to form their own whatever the hell they want. I'm talking about the big 10. I'm talking about the sec and in some form or fashion, the ACC and the big twelve. The NCAA's only leverage left is March madness is the NCAA basketball tournament. Nothing else. Nothing. So if they don't accommodate those conferences with the majority of the teams playing in this tournament by giving them most of the spots, as opposed to the cute stories, then all it is doing is alienating all of these different power brokers that are sitting there thinking, you know, why don't we just do our own thing? We don't need you. They do, but they don't. And the NCAA is basically in survival mode right now, and the casualty will be Cinderella. See you next time. Farooq Banash at three. Good. You can't be serious with that shot. This is a Stolen Water Media production.