Next Level Sports Marketing

If this game was why NBC pushed the Stanley Cup Finals into a calendar equivalent of a phone booth, the folks at Rockefeller Center are at least given a temporary reprieve.

It was not the prettiest Game 1 of the 2009 postseason as the Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-1, on Saturday night at Joe Louis Arena. It was not a game that will have many folks outside of Detroit and Pittsburgh chewing on it Sunday morning with their coffee and bagels.

But it was a triumph for those who want NHL hockey, the marquee version anyway, offered as a flower bouquet to an audience it is desperately hoping to court.

Saturday’s victory, apart from the one the Wings racked up against the Penguins, had to do with the skills and the stars on displays, which is what the NHL is, at all costs, attempting to inject into the living rooms and minds of a sports culture it desperately wants to impress.

That presentation has come at a questionable price. Marching two teams into the Stanley Cup Finals veritable hours after they nailed down their semifinals victories was not exactly noble.

It was even less defensible to ask the Wings and Penguins to play three games in four nights, the first two of which are back-to-back.

But the objective was TV exposure. The league needs for a country that can get hooked on the craziest things — “American Idol” comes to mind — to understand there is an age-old sport with speed and muscle and flash and passion being played, if only folks would take a couple of hours out from their channel-surfing to see what the NHL offers.