Hockey: Vegas Golden Knights-Florida Panthers, a final to melt the ice

This year, it will therefore be beach or desert. After spending a year near the snow-capped mountains of Colorado, the Stanley Cup – the prestigious trophy that rewards the North American ice hockey champion – will head to Florida or Nevada. The final phase, which begins on the night of Saturday June 3 to Sunday June 4 (Paris time) to designate the successor to the Avalanche – the defending franchise, based in Denver – offers a sunny opposition between the Florida Panthers and the Vegas Golden Knights. If this exotic poster, for a sport naturally associated with the cold, challenges, it actually concretizes an assumed strategy of the National Hockey League (NHL).

“League boss Gary Bettman has always wanted to popularize hockey across the United Statesexplains Jean-François Chaumont, journalist for the Montreal Journal, NHL expert. We know that the market is already established in the northern United States, particularly the Northeast, but it is a challenge to go further south. So a final between Vegas and Florida is a winning bet. »

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This “climate change” is not entirely new to the NHL. For a quarter of a century, the Stanley Cup has already taken up residence in California (with the titles of Anaheim, in 2007, and Los Angeles, in 2012 and 2014) and in Texas (Dallas, in 1999). Florida even hosted it recently with the double, in 2020 and 2021, from Tampa Bay, rival of the Panthers, based on the outskirts of Miami.

The Gretzky click

Historically, the gates of sunshine opened for the NHL in the late 1980s with the transfer of Canadian Edmonton Oilers star Wayne Gretzky (considered the greatest player of all time) to the Los Angeles Kings.

“It’s the first big star to land in a huge American market, deciphers Mr. Chaumont. And it was also the economic reality that hit the Oilers, who were no longer able to pay Gretzky at his fair value. »

Since this movement, American hockey has prospered beyond its traditional bastions in the East (Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, etc.) and has been able to create a popular enthusiasm in lands not very inclined to its practice. Markets have opened up and a new audience has been conquered by this ” culture shock “, as described by Eddy Ferhi, a former French international goalkeeper who played in the American minor leagues in Cincinnati (Ohio) then in San Diego (California).

“In San Diego, the skating rink was surrounded by palm trees and we entered it on tap dance, he remembers. In Cincinnati, a city more accustomed to hockey because in the north of the United States, going to the ice rink did not represent a pilgrimage for the inhabitants. But in San Diego, where the results weren’t necessarily better, people felt like they were going through something crazy, because going to the rink was already a trip in itself. » In Los Angeles, the fervor is still present around the Kings, who sponsor local ice rinks, organize training courses and tournaments to encourage vocations.

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