Bettman Maintains Optimism : Hockey: National TV ratings are low, but commissioner says fact that game is even being viewed on such a level is a start.

WASHINGTON —  In Canada, they’re writing and talking about NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s worst nightmare, a Stanley Cup final series matching the Montreal Canadiens against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But Bettman insists “it’s just not true,” even if a final series between the two other semifinalists--the New York Islanders and the Kings--surely would boost his sport’s U.S. television ratings at a time when the first-year commissioner can use all the help he can get in keeping the game on a national network.

“You want the two best teams in there, period,” Bettman said earlier this week. “That’s all you can ask for.”

Down the road, of course, Bettman wants lots more for a league that is beginning to crawl out of the electronic dark ages and into the ‘90s, even if the ratings for five weekends on ABC network television were relatively low. ABC averaged 1.7 for the 1-4 p.m. Sunday time slot, compared with CBS’s 1.6 and NBC’s NBA-dominated 5.6.

ESPN’s numbers have also been hovering at 1.1 for the season, down from the 1.6 the cable network averaged its last year of televising the NHL in 1988. (Each rating point represents 931,000 households.)

Bettman views the numbers not so much as a disaster but as a starting point. He says because the two TV deals were not completed until September, the league office was hampered by scheduling problems that prevented airing more attractive matchups.

He also knows hockey went up against the NBA on NBC the last three weeks, while hockey games in the same time period were generally one-sided, lackluster affairs.

Of the 11 games aired on ABC (the first three weeks were regionalized), only one game went to overtime. So far in the playoffs, 22 games have gone into overtime, many of them available on ESPN, ABC’s Capital Cities corporate cousin.

“As a building block,” Bettman said, “we had a good first year. It’s solid and something to grow on. It’s not fair to judge it on five weeks and a pre-existing schedule. And people need to know where you are every week. I did not expect to have fabulous numbers overnight. Yes, they could have been better, and they could have been worse.”

The ESPN-produced coverage on network and cable couldn’t have been much better. The games feature multiple cameras, many at ice level, super-slo motion replays and microphones, some in the nets, to enhance the look and the sound of this warp-speed sport.

Clearly the best place to view a hockey game has always been at the arena. ESPN analyst Bill Clement, working his eighth consecutive Stanley Cup finals, says he always tells people to watch their first hockey game from a seat somewhere close to the ice, preferably the front row behind the glass, in order to appreciate the game’s pace, grace and pounding.

“Since I started doing television, the technical advances in what we’re doing are amazing,” Clement said this week. “The super slow-mo camera was just made for hockey. To see a puck flutter toward the goaltender from ice level is just terrific.

“The philosophy of televising the games has changed, too. In the past, it was a lot of locking on the game from an upstairs camera and panning back and forth. That’s how it’s been done in Canada, but the people up there know the game so much better. In the United States, we take a lot more chances. We’re trying to take people closer to the action.”

Clement played 11 years in the NHL, including parts of two seasons for the Capitals in 1975-76--”the longest 52 games of my life,” he said. Like Bettman, he also believes hockey can succeed on network television and still has a chance “to be the sport of the ‘90s.

“The way I look at it, hockey has survived in spite of the NHL for years, and that’s a testament to the entertainment of the sport,” he said. “Now, to have progressive leadership that’s willing to move fast on everything, that’s going to make a big difference.”

John Wildhack, ESPN’s vice president for remote production, also said he believes it’s wrong to blame hockey’s torrid pace for it’s problems in attracting a wider audience in this country.

“I don’t think that’s the reason it hasn’t caught on,” he said. “Is the puck hard to follow? Sure. But it’s a cop-out for why it hasn’t made it big. Just look at the cities where it’s made it. Most of them are in the Northeast and the Midwest. With expansion in Florida next year and another team in California, the game has a real chance to become a national sport, not just a regional one.”

ESPN is in this for the long haul, with a five-year, $80-million contract to do 26 regular season games and up to 40 games in the playoffs. The league also wants to stay on network TV, and ABC seems most likely to continue, though no deal has yet been signed.

“What we’re trying to do,” Wildhack said, “is to appeal to the moderate fan. We know there’s a hard core with us already. We’re trying to make it more enticing to people who flick the dial and might tune in and stay with us.”