You may have not noticed but the 2007/08 National Hockey League is almost a month old already. The Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Kings played the league opening two game series across the pond in London.

The designated home team won each game, 4-1, as the NHL kicked off its third campaign since the league locked its players out for the entire 2004/05 season.

With the National Football League almost half way through its regular season, the National Basketball Association getting ready to open its regular season soon, and Major League Baseball heading toward the World Series, its would be hard to find any sports fans that would be tuning in to watch hockey over professional football, basketball, and baseball.

If you add in that NASCAR is down to the final five races for the NEXTEL Cup championship, is there even a slot open to televised a hockey game. The NHL’s main TV contract is with Versus and is worth only a mere $70 million. That’s chicken feed when compared to the Big Four – NFL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR. The Big Four’s  television revenue is led by the NFL at $3.1 billion per year. The NBA is second at $765 million, followed by MLB at $670 million, and NASCAR at $560 million.

The NHL has realized that hockey isn’t working on television and they have explored several options to connect with the fans again.

Over the past decade, fans have suffered Fox’s glowing pucks and ABC’s remote-controlled “eyes in the sky”. Finding a game on TV partner Versus is like finding a Chicago Cubs fan that enjoys losing every year for the past 99 seasons. One of the best games last season on Versus was a Sidney Crosby-Alex Ovechkin matchup that drew a whopping 0.2 Nielsen rating. A documentary on the Discovery channel about Penguin migration probably would’ve had a higher rating.

Hockey now is trying to connect to fans by going interactive and digital, and it turns out that watching high-quality video of your choice, for free or on the cheap, is often more enjoyable than hunting for a game on cable.

In the past year, as other leagues have squabbled about digital rights, the NHL has hooked up with more than a dozen websites and software platforms. You can now find hundred of games (recent or classic) for free on Google.

The NHL is going after the younger generation and giving them plenty of options that were never available in the past. For hockey on the run, there are downloadable clips available virtually everywhere on the internet. Clips are also available through iTunes and Unbox. The NHL has even reached to MySpace to lure fans back to the NHL.

The best thing going for the NHL is that if hockey disappeared from television it won’t have that of big impact on the league. The league has set attendance records the past two seasons. Last year NHL hockey arenas were filled 92% to capacity. Hockey revenue has always been driven by gate receipts, and these days the number of empty seats at a hockey game are few and far between.

The NHL set a record last year as it took in $2.2 billion in collective revenue. Thats up 21% since the player lockout in 2004/05. The advent of the salary cap has given every franchise a chance to be competitive each year. Teams can spend between $34.3 million and $50.3 million per year on players salaries.

This could be the first time in the modern era that sports franchises have leveled costs to the ones that pay for everything – the fans.

I would suggest that if you have never been to a NHL game in person, you should find an arena near you and check out the new NHL. The action is fast and exciting. Long gone are the days of 0-0 ties and every game ends now with a winner. Nothing was worse than going to or watching a game that ended in a tie. The best thing the NHL did was add the shootout at the end of a regulation tie game to determine a winner.

I hear a lot of people say that NASCAR is boring to watch on TV. It might be if you have never attended a race before. The majority of those people have different thoughts after they finally attend a live race. The same can be said true for hockey.

The next thing the NHL needs to do is to find a way to educate the general public on the rules of the game. So many people don’t have a clue when it comes to the rules of the game and therefore are immediately turned off by the game.

The NHL has survived the player lockout which was very close to ruining the game forever. Now the league is thriving and looks like its here to stay for awhile.