Crosby Only Marketing Should Embarrass NHL

During intermissions at Stockton Thunder games, we are often forced to watch a Reebok ad featuring Pittsburgh Penguin star Sidney Crosby.

I often mention my displeasure at the ad, as I am (to be generous) not a huge fan of Crosby. (My wife finds these outbursts slightly annoying.)

As a Washington Capitals fan, I find most things Pittsburgh Penguin annoying or worse. The Penguins have caused far too much heartache and frustration.

Now I am forced to watch the NHL focus its advertising on Crosby, while overlooking the league's reigning MVP, Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin.

Even someone like the New York Post's Larry Brooks is noting the NHL's stupidity:

Look, Crosby is an admirable individual and great player. But the NHL has made a drastic error in anointing No. 87 as The Chosen One. The NHL's All-Crosby-All-The-Time marketing machine has been detrimental to the sport by virtue of its exclusionary policy.

We get it, Crosby is Canadian and Ovechkin is Russian. But we also get that focusing on one athlete at the expense of a contemporary at least his equal and now clearly his superior, is stupid strategy that makes for horrible business policy.

Even I have to admit Crosby's greatness as a player. But the NHL's decision to overlook Ovechkin is an all-too-typical poor marketing decision that will cost the league in the future.