Business of Sports October 1, 2009, 12:26PM EST

The NHL's Icy Start

Salary problems are in the past, but carriage issues and team ownership questions could mar the beginning of the 2009 NHL season

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1. NHL Drops the Puck on Regular Season

This week is traditionally a time to overcome jet lag for many players in the National Hockey League, as teams return from preseason games across Europe to prep for divisional foes here in the U.S. As the NHL gears up for regular season play to start on Oct. 1, the leagues slate of business issues for the 2009-2010 season is far from smooth as ice.

On the positive side, the league is already looking forward to major midseason marketing vehicles, including the hugely popular Bridgestone Winter Classic on New Year's Day (this year's edition features the Philadelphia Flyers playing the Boston Bruins at Fenway Park) and the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Together, these events provide a huge boost for hockey in ubëat;r fan-friendly environments. The rising rivalry between the Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby and the Washington Capitals' Alex Ovechkin is also drawing interest outside of the sport's base of hard-core fans.

Gone are the salary issues that precipitated the league's 2004 work stoppage, as the new salary cap does not allow any player to make more than 20% of his team's total payroll (Ovechkin is the closest at 17%). And as the ultimate sign of stability,there is no shortage of cities itching for an NHL franchise, with Hamilton, Kansas City, and Seattle all lobbying for teams.

But serious carriage issues linger. A deal is not yet in place between the NHL and Time Warner Cable (TWC) for a Center Ice package this season, although executives on both sides seem confident that one will be in place by the end of this week. More critically, the current carriage dispute between Versus and DirecTV (DTV) has NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman urging hockey fans to "Call DirecTV and tell them you're not happy"—the league's viewership will obviously be way down without satellite TV coverage, a blow for the NHL and its sponsors alike.

In Arizona, the fate of the Phoenix Coyotes continues to distract, as issues surrounding the sale of the team loom over the preseason and the team's Oct. 10 home opener. With prospective owner Jim Balsillie amending his bid and the issue tied up in court, the franchise at least knows that it will call Glendale home for the entire 2009-2010 season. The Tampa Bay Lightning are also going through owner's box shifts, as co-owner Oren Koules takes on billionaire Miami real estate investor Jeff Greene as a partner to fend off takeover plays for the team.

Despite all of the NHL's success over the past five years, none of these benchmarks will matter if the league cannot maintain labor peace. The current CBA, which was ratified in 2005, expires in September 2011. Complicating negotiations, the NHLPA is without a permanent Executive Director, after Paul Kelly was fired earlier this month. Although the NHL managed to survive one lost season, another work stoppage would be devastating to the league and Commissioner Bettman's reputation.

2. "90 Days without Lost Time?" MLB Wraps 2009 Regular Season

As its teams play the final handful of regular-season games and players clean out their lockers and arrange tee times, Major League Baseball has reason for minor celebration—it's been over three months since a MLB player tested positive for a banned substance, was the subject of a tell-all book, or dated Madonna. Let Plaxico Burress go to jail for shooting himself in the leg, let Lamar Odom marry Khloe Kardashian. MLB, for the moment, is solidly focused on the game at hand.

MLB finished its season with an average attendance of 40,055, down close to 7% from last year. Only nine MLB teams posted attendance increases over last year through Sept. 27, and fewer than a third of all teams seem poised to post attendance gains. All division leaders, with the exception of the World Champion Phillies, are down from 2008. The combined increase for the nine teams with gains "comes to 11,881 fans per game," according to MLB figures, while another nine teams—the Astros, Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, Indians, Mets, Nationals, Padres, Tigers, and Yankees—are "all down more than 4,000 fans per game."