NHL fans may be wondering what good there has been for their league this season. Sure, the standings have been pretty scrambled and you’re never really sure who will win on a given night (unless the Leafs are playing) but that was the whole point of the salary cap and the attempt to create parity. Of course, that was the reason why the owners hired commissioner Gary Bettman in 1993. If he were to listen to the fans, Gary wouldn’t think he has a lot to be thankful on his Thanksgiving. But I think there are a few things that he give thanks for helping the NHL.

1. The Olympics are this year. The smartest thing that Gary ever did to promote the game and league internationally was allow NHL stars to play in the Olympics. The NHL might not have prominent TV deals worldwide but Olympic hockey highlights and medal games were bound to be broadcast around the world. Unlike the NBA, the NHL had a lot more to gain from this exposure. The NHL is a much more international league than the NBA so the exposure on a more global stage helps them a lot more. Besides, everyone will tune into a sport they wouldn’t otherwise watch during the Olympics. What better way to pick up new fans than to have folks tune into hockey when they would never think about it otherwise.

2. The Winter Classic hasn’t gotten stale yet. The best drawing regular season game is the annual outdoor game. There wasn’t a more cool spectacle than the first Winter Classic in Buffalo. It was just like pond hockey growing up. Starting in the sunlight and ending in the snow. It couldn’t have gone better. Last season’s game had the great backdrop of historic Wrigley Field and the next game will be at Fenway Park. Combining the novelty of an outdoor game with great venues has made this game just as big as any of the meaningless, sponsored college football bowl games. The Rose Bowl is important. The Capital One Bowl… Not so much. But the Winter Classic airs before the day’s BCS games so it kicks off a big sports day. But the minute they add a second outdoor game to the schedule, the novelty dies. We all know that Gary will try something like that.

3. More people watch the NHL on Versus than the IRL. That’s not really an accomplishment when you think about it. If memory serves, the IRL was averaging something like 250,000 viewers for its races on Versus. The NHL’s playoffs were averaging viewership in the millions. Not a fair comparison but when you consider that one bad race could take you out of championship contention, every IRL race is kinda like a playoff game. Whatever the average regular season numbers for the NHL, it’s worse than the pre-lockout numbers but the IRL shows how it could be so much worse. That brings me to number four.

4. The NHL still has a network partner. Okay, that network partner is NBC which is the #4 network channel in the US. Still, they treat the NHL reasonably well. They’re on Sunday afternoons in the winter and spring without much competition on the other networks. It makes some sense. How else are folks going to pass hangover Sundays without some entertainment? It’s either the loud roar of NASCAR engines or the relative calm of hockey. And unlike the IRL was rumoured to be, the NHL isn’t paying to get on network TV. They aren’t getting actual contract revenue but they’re getting some advertising revenue from NBC. It may not be much but at least it’s a foot in the door. And ESPN wants to get back with the NHL so there’s options.

5. Evgeni Malkin is back from injury. No, Geno isn’t Gary’s golden boy. That title goes to Malkin’s teammate Sidney Crosby who, like previous heroes of the game Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky, isn’t the player most fond of being in the limelight. That being said, he’s still the man that Gary is trying to market as the biggest star in the NHL right now. The only problem with that is Sidney needs somebody to take the heat off him to make him an offensive star. Without Malkin to take the heat off him, Crosby was entirely shut down the whole time Malkin was on the shelf. With Malkin back, the great Crosby marketing experiment can ratchet back up. As for that crazy Ovechkin guy…

6. The focus is off Phoenix. The only news the NHL was really making over the summer was that the Phoenix Coyotes had declared bankruptcy. If it wasn’t for the fact that a clinically insane billionaire wanted to save the Coyotes and move them to a real hockey market, this would have been a non-story from the start. The NHL decided that Jim Balsillie couldn’t end run the league’s rules to buy a team and save it so they bought it. If it wasn’t for the fact that the media was busy talking about head shots, they would be talking about the Phoenix Coyotes losing millions of dollars a year. Now it’s the the league that’s pouring millions of dollars down the drain. But everyone is more concerned with the safety of the players than the long term viability of the league. Fortunately for Bettman, he can also dodge any responsibility for the headshot thing because there’s whole piles of red tape that rules have to go through before approval.

7. People actually want to buy the Phoenix Coyotes. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly was quoted as saying that there are six group interested in buying the Coyotes and keeping them in Phoenix. I don’t know what actually constitutes an “interested group.” I’d like to own an NHL franchise. Does that make me a party interested in buying the Coyotes? The only noteworthy think about Daly’s announcement is that there are people in the world that are interested in burning money. That’s all that would happen to an owner over an NHL franchise in Phoenix. It’s hopeless and I’m sure Gary can’t wait to get that train wreck off the NHL’s books. He may be committed to increasing the NHL’s presence in America but even he must realize how dumb hockey in the desert really is.

8. John McCain hasn’t discovered hockey’s existence yet. The Senator from the great state of Arizona is probably best known for his views on mixed martial arts rather than losing to Barack Obama (though I think many Americans are wishing they had a mulligan on that). McCain famously likened MMA to human cockfighting and was an outspoken opponent of the sport. If he saw what hockey has degenerated into, he’d probably refer to hockey as cockfighting on ice. How many fights this year have ended like an MMA fight with guys getting taken down or knocked out? That’s something for the octagon, not the rink. I’m not trying to get all preachy because I like fighting in hockey but it’s stopped being hockey fighting and become MMA on ice. I’m sure John McCain would fully support getting the Coyotes out of his state if it meant the end of cockfighting on ice.

9. The Ice Girls are popular. Very few things in hockey circulate the internet as much as pictures of various ice girls around the league. Mind you, I’m basing that solely on Hot Clicks where the only time hockey is mentioned is if there’s a way to work ice girls into the mix. Given that Hot Clicks has changed the blogosphere, it’s safe to say that it has a sizeable influence on the internet. You’ll never find great goals from the likes of Ovechkin, Nash, or Perron on the Clicks but you will find hockey’s rough equivalent to cheerleaders. Actually, besides the elimination of the two-line pass rule, ice girls are probably the greatest innovation to the game under Bettman’s watch. Purist don’t seem to have a major problem with them either so it seems all good.

10. The NHL still has Canada. If it wasn’t for all the ticket sales, merchandise revenue, TV contracts and sponsorship coming in from Canada, most of the NHL would have long since died out. Really, teams in Phoenix, Florida, Tampa, Atlanta, and Nashville were epic disasters. I don’t think that Gary has quite figured that out yet. However, he doesn’t really have to rush to that conclusion. Revenue sharing means that all the extra profits that the Canadian teams have fallen into can head right down south. If it wasn’t for Canada, as much as Gary seems to hate it, the NHL would have been contracting teams years ago.