The 90's Years Aka Please, No More Cotton Eye Joe
Like much of Yorkshire, hockey has evolved rapidly in the last few decades. In the 90's, the hockey landscape changed. Gone were the close Canadian rivalries between Canadian cities, replaced by American teams in cities that only saw snow when it was cleared off the rink and left to melt in the parking lot outside the arena. The epitome of the decade was when an American team from Minnesota (made famous in the Coen brothers movie Fargo) moved to Texas, made famous by not being remotely anything like Minnesota. With Gretzky's mega trade to the Los Angeles Kings, the NHL quickly hopped on board the public relations dream. They moved non-profitable teams in Canadian cities to non-profitable American cities. The demise of the USSR brought in an influx of Russian/European talent that introduced a new
level of talent and flying elbows that new fans grew to appreciate. To take advantage of this increased popularity, the league introduced a myriad of branding initiatives to gain a strong audience in America which only served to confuse new and old fans. Conferences were realigned to maximize profit and minimize travel costs. The much beloved Canada Cup tournament was retired, reborn briefly as the World Cup and then the league just said 'screw it' and allowed the players to go play for their native countries during the Winter Olympics. Teams were continually introducing 'third' or 'matinee' jerseys to go along with their home and away jerseys. The NHL truly jumped the shark when Disney released the kid's movie series The Mighty Ducks, then created a real hockey franchise around it. Despite all this, fighting in hockey was often mentioned as being too violent for an American television audience which is why it would never become truly popular. Yes, you read it right, American television thought it was too violent for America. The television rights and ratings they did receive were relatively small compared to the Big Three and NASCAR. It's defining moment came in 1994 when the New York Rangers defeated the Vancouver Canucks in one of the most exciting best of seven Stanley Cup Finals in history and the hockey world was poised to see what the next year would bring. Then came the first NHL player's lock out and after that, the wide-spread use of a team game plan called 'The Trap' which basically relied on a defence first mentality. While it was widely stated that defence wins games, the Trap was the probably the first real example of it at work. And boy, did it work. Teams that played the much more boring Trap style went on to win Stanley Cups and other teams soon adapted it. Gone were the high scoring games, the end to end rushes replaced by a smothering defence and a media that soon learned that the only real important statistic was the number in the wins column.