There's Never Been A Better Time For The NHL To Bring Back The Glow Puck Than At This Year's All Star Game
The NHL as a league has never been better. There's at least one legitimate superstar on like half the teams in the league. Aside from Boston just running away with everything this year, the parity between the top 2-20 teams this year is insane. Highlight reel goals every night. Even more young talent coming up the pipeline over the next few years. Everything about the league is great.
And yet they still can't quite figure out a way to market themselves. Don't get me wrong, the NHL on TNT broadcasts have been great and that panel is definitely doing a solid job of bringing out some entertaining personalities. But most of the best players in the league just so happen to be some of the most boring humans on the planet. Boring personalities create boring storylines. So the NHL needs to step up and make a splash. Get a little something going to get the people buzzing. They need to bring back the glow puck.
The glow puck might have been the most incredible technological advancement that humans have seen in the past century. Yet for some reason the NHL just…did away with it. But like everything else in life, what was once old is now new again. Pretty much everything else from the 90s has been making a comeback anyway. Why not get the glow puck involved?
Speaking of which, the jerseys they'll be wearing for this year's All Star Game are already based off the sweaters they wore from '94 - '97.
So you've got the '90s All Star jerseys to match. The game in Florida. They've already been doing the 3v3 tournament for long enough now that it's lost its allure. What better time to bring back the glow puck than right now?
The only possible issue I could see the league running into would be when a shot goes wide and the puck crashes off the boards. Which wasn't an issue for the broadcasts in the '90s, but considering how the digital ads appear to be working out this year…
All the advancements we've made in technology over the past 27 years since the glow puck was first incepted, and THAT is the best the NHL can do when it comes to digital advertisements? Yikes. I know people hate the idea of jerseys getting overtaken by corporate sponsors but I feel like I'd rather see a few more logos on the back of a sweater than not being able to see anything that happens behind the net on the broadcast.
Just seems to me that if the NHL wants people to tune into the All Star Game again, then they have a ridiculously simple decision to make here. You draw people in with the resurgence of the glow puck. And then what's going to happen after that? You really expect people to just change the channel once you've already got them locked in watching the USDA Prime Beef line of Tage Thompson, Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk leading the Atlantic Division to victory? Think again.