A token of his affection: our favorite Canadian pays tribute to the World Cup of Hockey.(Know It All)

Obscurity has a way of sneaking up on you. Take the NHL, for instance. A decade ago, the league was at the top of its game, all happy about positive publicity extolling it as the next NBA. Networks were falling over themselves to ride the wave to the top, paying exorbitant amounts for the right to show the games.

Next thing you know, Jude the Obscure is your mascot. A labor dispute threatens your shrinking visibility in the sports world, and few Americans seem to care. The league had to grovel with NBC to end up with a TV deal one shade north of pay-per-view--as in, we'll pay you to watch it. The NHL has sunk so far so fast that it remains a token sport among media outlets.

This saddens me. Why? Well, as the token hockey-loving Canadian working within the magnificent spires of the SPORTING NEWS offices, I knOW what it's like to be stereotyped because nobody really knows all that much about who or what you are. For every time the league hears "I went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out" or "Hockey is boring," I get "How about that one week of summer in Canada?" or "Do you eat a lot of moose meat?"

I'm a big boy, an army of me, so I can handle it. The NHL, on the other hand, isn't doing so well.

The World Cup of Hockey is the best deal to come around in ages, yet hardly anyone outside hockey circles seems to care: ESPN, for instance, isn't ...