Please don't like my sport.

The Ottawa Senators play Game 7 tonight. And whether they defeat the Penguins for the Prince of Wales Trophy (which no player dare touch, lest they accidentally unleash its plague of salamanders upon the province), they fall short, or they fail to snatch the trophy from a bunch of guys on horseback, it should be fairly clear that the Senators would be nowhere near this close to June hockey without Erik Karlsson carrying them through most of the postseason.

There's been repeated talk about this year's playoffs as a sort of "coming-out" party for Karlsson, as the dashing Swedish defenseman has been integral in the Sens' surprising deep run. He has 16 points in 18 games. Both of the goals he's tallied have been game-winners. In fact, before Tuesday night's victory, Karlsson had been on the ice for every single Senators game-winning goal of this postseason. He also does stuff like this on occasion, holy jeezus:

#GottaSeeIt: Erik Karlsson springs Mike Hoffman for a breakaway and a beauty finish. #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/N9Pr2Y6N4w

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 17, 2017

And despite the solid offensive numbers, he's anything but the second coming of Mike Green; Karlsson is a no-doubt top-tier defender, with incredible speed and strength on the ice, despite playing through the postseason with a pair of hairline fractures in his heel, plus whatever maladies get revealed after the Senators' final game. ("Karlsson had three fractured ribs... Anderson's left arm was swapped out with an elaborate K'Nex set... Cody Ceci had this hangnail that just wouldn't go away.")

So yes, the Erik Karlsson Show has been in full effect, and deservedly so. What a great story, a player coming out of nowhere to light up the league and lead his underdog team to unexpected success!

Except, for anyone who follows the NHL closely, all this talk of Karlsson's sudden prominence is yet another indictment of this garage league and its complete inability to market its players and its game to a league-wide audience, much less a nationwide or continent-wide one.

Erik Karlsson is not some flash in the pan. He is not some suddenly-emergent youngster. He is a former first-round pick in his eighth NHL season. He is his team's captain, averaging 0.82 points per game for his regular-season career. He is a four-time All-Star, and there have only been five All-Star games during his career. He was the leading scorer in the 2014 Olympics (tied with Phil! Kessel,) and was named the Games' most valuable defenseman. He has twice won the freaking Norris Trophy, the award that ostensibly goes to the best defenseman in the league whose prominent voices are hailing his sudden emergence over the last two months. Erik Karlsson has the credentials to be a Face of the League (and what a face, damn those Swedes,) so why is he only now getting consistent recognition?

One of the arguments I've heard about this is "Well, he plays in Ottawa." And sure, Ottawa is a Canadian market, and probably the Canadian NHL market that gets the least national attention in Canada. The Sens have been either an early-round flameout or an easily-ignored non-qualifier for the last decade. Their owner cries poor and begs for government money for a downtown stadium while hindering his own team with a self-imposed salary cap. The Rideau Canal smells like gravy, and not in the good way. Great player, not-so-great, small-market team. Can't expect a guy in any situation like that to light up TV sets from coast to coast, after all.

And yet, to borrow a page from every trashpile meme that circulates the internet yearly between April and June: Look at the NBA. Right around the time Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered their league, they figured out that if they gave big marketing pushes to exciting star players, it would be beneficial to the league as a whole. Then Michael Jordan came around a few years later, and that strategy worked out pretty okay for them. (Fun parallel: Magic entered the NBA in 1979, as Wayne Gretzky fell into the NHL's lap; Jordan turned pro in 1984, the same year as Mario Lemieux.)

Here's how that NBA strategy works out: I know who Giannis Antetokounmpo is. I barely watch any basketball, and I'm not even going to take a passing attempt at saying his name out loud, but I know who he is, and I know he's fun as hell to watch. This is despite the fact that he plays for the Milwaukee Bucks, a team that has been wholly irrelevant in the NBA for three solid decades, and plays in the 41st-largest U.S. media market. (Milwaukee's city population is about 360,000 people less than Ottawa's, though its metropolitan area is about 200,000 people larger.) The Bucks are so pointless in the NBA, in fact, that when the time came to justify handing over several hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to the Bucks' owners for a new stadium, this is the best sales pitch state officials could come up with:

Photo of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker balances out the Karlsson pic linked earlier.

So the Bucks play sub-.500 basketball in a small market, but their star player still makes his presence known throughout the league, because the NBA has more than half a clue what it's doing. In fact, it gets that casual fans would probably rather watch interesting and fun players than watch two "big" teams that suck eggs; that's why the NBA lets its TV partners flex out crappy games toward the end of the season, even if said crappy game involves media markets #1 and #3. You'd think the NHL and NBC would get the message on this with the Blackhawks' window inching toward a close, the Red Wings already in the dumper, the Bruins on the fringe, the Kings tearing it all down, and the Rangers just boring the ever-loving crap out of everyone in a 50-mile radius every time they take the ice. But it's hard to see the self-fulfilling prophecy of "only fans of these teams will watch, so these are the only teams we'll put on national games" getting altered any time soon. So if Nashville wins the Cup this year, let's all prepare ourselves to double over in laughter when they don't get booked for a single 11:30 Sunday game on NBC and Wings-Bruins gets three slots.

These decisions are not merely based in business sense or a lack thereof, though; they are also rooted in the often misguided and backward tendencies of Hockey Culture. Speaking of the Predators, Evan F. Moore wrote yesterday in The Shadow League about how Hockey Culture suppressed, then ostracized P.K. Subban. While there is an obvious racial component to Subban's treatment, many of the broad strokes against him by The Guardians of The Right Way can be applied to so many other would-be household names. Look at him drawing attention to himself. Look at him having too much fun out there, even though every damn pregame interview from our lead sideline reporter ends with Pierre telling a player to have fun out there. Look at him not being a boring, anonymous cog in our team machine. These things must be stamped out and discouraged in favor of monotone platitudes about getting pucks in deep and playing our game out there. Fealty to The Team and The History must take precedent above all. Sure, Subban has shown nothing but love and respect for the game's legends, and even forged a deep emotional bond with The Canadien during his time in Montreal. And there was the whole millions of dollars and countless hours of service donated to sick children thing.

But, you know, dancing and fancy handshakes and too much smiling, so it's far better to build the team around Shea Weber and Steve Ott and get our asses walloped in the first round. It's losing The Right Way, you see.

There are encouraging cracks forming in Hockey Culture. Social media has allowed players capable of expressing themselves to actually do so, winning over new fans outside of their home markets in the process. Remember when we viewed Roberto Luongo as a whiny jerk, and not a self-deprecating goof worth cheering for? Remember when hockey fans latched on to a doofy fifth-liner like Paul Bissonnette because it was such a shock to find a hockey player at any level of skill with something genuine and interesting to say?

Players who haven't already had the personality drummed out of them through Bantam and Junior can can finally give their fans a more authentic version of themselves, and something to cheer for besides the home team's laundry. (Note that this does not always work out as a positive; hello, Thomas Greiss.) And as fans become more aware of the game's great players, regardless of the markets they play in, perhaps the NHL will get the message that showcasing and marketing all of these great players will only be to its benefit.

Or the league can just cross its fingers and hope that Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Washington, but definitely not Ottawa, oh God, not Ottawa, make it into the Final each and every year.

Go Sens.

Dogs and cats, living together.

I realize that a significant portion of 2017 has felt like the darkest of possible rides through Opposite-Land, but I didn't think it would get to the point where I'd find myself agreeing with Gary Bettman and Jeremy Jacobs on something.

In case you missed it, the fire of indignation over the NHL declining to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics got stoked again last week when Jacobs, the man who gets his cut from every food and beverage purchase you make at a game, and will stop at nothing if you disrupt his fancy-dancing horse lifestyle, said of the NHL's Olympic non-participation, “I think the four people that watch it don’t justify it.”

Obviously, this was an exaggeration by Jacobs. You can get four people to watch just about any hockey game at any level at any time, except maybe if the Carolina Hurricanes are playing at home. Regardless, the internet froth rose up anew among the many who are sore that they won't get to see elite professional international competition, and also see the backwards-ass NHL once again shooting itself in the foot rather than working to grow the sport and expand its fanbase.

The thing is, though, at least in this case, Jeremy Jacobs, the majority of NHL owners, and Gary Bettman and his front-office cronies, are right. Excuse me.

*dry-heaves into toilet for fifteen minutes*

I know a lot of people want the NHL in the Olympics. But wanting something and having it actually be a good idea are two different things; just ask me at 1:00am after a few drinks as I open up the eBay app on my phone. So let's go through this point-by-point, kinda.

This Olympics will not be live-TV friendly. Yes, I know, you're going to watch, because you're bonkers for hockey and the purity of the competition and the best in the world and pre-dawn day-drinking was a riot during Sochi and so on. Here's the problem, though: Russia, as you likely know, is quite large. And Sochi is basically along Russia's westernmost border, so there was a ten-hour time difference. PyeongChang, home of the 2018 Games, is five time zones east of Sochi. Which means:

Well, you're not going to the bar to watch it with friends, I guess. But hey, you can always DVR it or watch it on stream! Just make sure you don't unconsciously reach for your phone at any point before you finish watching the game, because you follow a lot of hockey people, and that result will be spoiled twenty times before you even start scrolling. Oh, and don't go to the front page of NBC's Olympics site en route to the archived game stream, because the result's going to be front-and-center there, too.

Beijing, host of the 2022 Games, is only one hour closer to North America than PyeongChang, by the way.

No, seriously, not that many people are going to watch it. The last few Winter Olympics have been very accessible for North American hockey viewers. Sochi in 2014 was on the fringes with the early morning starts, but Torino in 2006 was a couple hours closer, and both 2002 and 2010 were on the continent. Now, the first NHL Olympics, Nagano in 1998, sported the same time zone difference as PyeongChang. The viewership of said games was, uh, not so good:

For many viewers, CBS's coverage was a major turn-off. How else to explain far lower than expected overall ratings? With final numbers due today, they'll finish about three points below what advertisers had been guaranteed, 40 percent off from the '94 Games in Lillehammer and 13 percent behind Albertville in '92. 

. . .

Only H.G. Wells could have been proud of CBS's time-warping coverage, which often included staying away from live action in prime or late-night shows to air tape of major events 24 hours or more after they occurred. Why not show it live if at all possible, then air it again on tape the next night? Men's hockey, despite the U.S. team trashing and thrashing on and off the ice, produced several classic games, all on well past midnight in the East, then barely reprised the next night in prime time. 

I want to note a couple of things here. First, 1998 was nineteen years ago, and oh God, I can feel death's cold breath encroaching on the back of my neck. Second, back then, even a tape-delayed Olympics could be nearly spoiler-free. The internet had to be dialed into on a desktop PC, and even then, sports coverage was still the domain of outlets that had already been established in print, radio, or television. These outlets needed to play by the rules to maintain their access, and if those rules included an embargo on results by the broadcast rights holder, they would abide. And still, CBS didn't bother showing the full games on delay, either because watching the home team getting its nuts kicked in doesn't make for the best showcasing of national sporting pride, or because even if the U.S. had put half the effort into its games that it did into vandalizing hotel rooms, hockey wouldn't carry the ratings heft of figure skating or skiing, nor would it lure as attractive of an advertising demographic.

Compare that to now, and the free flow of information. How many casual sports fans are going to sit through a full tape-delayed hockey game when the result is a tap away? And again, how many diehards, who will definitely know the final score ahead of time, will do that? Think back to Sochi in 2014, when T.L. "T.J." Oshie single-handedly defeated Russia in a 126-round shootout on a North American Saturday morning, thereby asserting America's dominance as a superpower and ensuring the Russians would never exert any nefarious influence over our way of life. NBC replayed it in primetime. Not the whole game, just the shootout. And they packaged it with the result in full view, an "in case you heard about it and haven't seen it yet, or maybe want to see it again" type of presentation. It got the first half hour of programming, maybe, and then it was onto, presumably, figure skating. That's the presence overnight hockey will have in the prime viewing hours if something really, really interesting happens. Otherwise, it's going to be an intimate gathering of a couple hundred thousand making counterproductive caffeine consumption decisions.

Now, I am aware that when it comes to hockey, both the IIHF and IOC know where their bread is buttered. And with NBC throwing enough money at the Olympics nowadays to influence some scheduling decisions, we know that the USA and Canada will be put in the same pool to guarantee at least one game between the two, and those in charge of scheduling will maybe push the start of that game to something like 10:00pm PyeongChang time, so it airs at 8:00am Eastern, likely on a Saturday or Sunday. But still, what's the top end of viewership for that game? Let's go back to Sochi for comparison, when Team USA played Canada at Noon Eastern (9:00pm Sochi time) on a Friday, and that game set all kinds of ratings records. It was the highest rated hockey game ever! (on NBCSN) (which had only existed for two years at the time) It gave the network its best ratings in history! (in daytime) (on a weekday) (when they normally air reruns of fishing shows) (and the USA-Russia game on Saturday morning got more viewers) It was, uh, about the equivalent of any Stanley Cup Final game not involving the New Jersey Devils since 2008.

(Side note: My God, look at the numbers for that Anaheim-Ottawa series in 2007. It's a minor miracle this league still exists, and I wonder how many NBC Sports executives have cyanide capsules at the ready, given how this year is shaking out.)

So that's where this tops out: Give USA-Canada a pool game with a special timeslot, and hope Team USA somehow gets into the medal round, and you get up to two games' worth of Stanley Cup Final ratings. That's not four people, but it's not exactly something worth a three-week midseason dead spot and a cancellation of the lucrative All-Star weekend. Speaking of:

The league doesn't make any money off of it. This is the big one, right? The NHL's owners are being asked to give up their talent and schedule in the name of the purity and splendor of Olympic competition, and also to help subsidize the tiger blood lasagna some IOC executive will order for room service on a weekend jaunt to Davos. The league's leaders finally knocked their heads together enough to coordinate the World Cup and promise they'll keep doing it regularly this time, because making money is good, actually. And if the World Cup stabilizes and grows, to the point where there's eight national teams and maybe some play-in qualifiers, then who needs the Olympics? Let the Olympic tournament stand as an interesting U-23 competition, like it does in soccer. People who want to watch will still watch that. And Americans at large, possibly seeing a lineup of Good College Boys playing against a bunch of big-ruble KHLers from Russia, might find a compelling storyline worth cheering for. Meanwhile, the NHL can make its money on its own tournament without having to wait for those mythical secondary Olympic revenues to arrive, because...

The potential for growing the game internationally is greatly exaggerated. This is the main argument from the hockey punditry: "Oh, you gotta grow the game. Putting hockey's best on the world stage is the best way for you to grow the game." That untapped potential for growth comes out in musings like this one from TSN's Rick Westhead:

655 million Chinese, 38 million South Koreans, 80 million Brazilians watched last Winter Games.
Aren’t they potential fans & customers? /2 pic.twitter.com/TAyfC9ItIG

— Rick Westhead (@rwesthead) May 4, 2017

Boy, those sure are some large audiences! I encourage you to click on the graphic, though, which is a clipping from a promotional brochure that defines those millions and millions of foreign Winter Olympics viewers as "anyone who watched at least one minute of programming from Sochi." One minute. So, perhaps some follow-up questions are needed to gauge the true international growth potential for the NHL and hockey in general, like:

• What were the TV ratings for Olympic hockey in countries like China, Brazil, and South Korea, that did not have teams participating in the tournament?
• Did networks in these countries even include hockey in their Olympic telecasts?
• Does the NHL have broadcast rights agreements in any of these countries?
• If so, what kind of TV ratings does the NHL achieve in countries with little-to-no historical ice hockey fandom?
• How many NHL-caliber arenas with functional ice plants are available in these countries?
• In terms of both time and money, how much of an investment is needed to establish and/or develop youth hockey programs in these countries?
• Should the NHL go all-in on China because they have one KHL team with attendance averaging in the hundreds that somehow has enough money to wave in front of Mike Keenan, because it's China, and you're better off not asking where the money's coming from?
• Would the NHL play in the Olympics if all the games had a one-minute time limit?

You know where the NHL needs to Grow The Game? Here! It's not like hockey has conquered North America and is seeking out manifest destiny across the globe, having saturated the domestic market. It's still only the 4th-most-popular professional sports league in the U.S., and is seemingly a bigger threat to drop down to 5th behind soccer each and every year. Fix your own house before you go barging in on everyone else's. Learn how to run your business before you start franchising. We've had two decades of the NHL's attempt to Grow The Game via Olympic competition. It's still the same teams competing for medals every year. It's still a league with revenues driven more by paid attendance than broadcast rights deals. It's still a league that can basically have all its coverage from America's largest sports outlet given pink slips in the middle of the playoffs, and have that viewed as a sensible business decision. It's still a fringe league, a niche sport, and often, a punchline.

A few more go-rounds against Slovenia at 2 in the morning is not going to alter that to a significant degree.