Moving up in the world

This is either really good news for Outdoor Life Network, or really bad news for the NHL.
Or both.
ESPN said "thanks, but no thanks" when the NHL tried to extend the league's television contract with the cable network. As a fallback, the NHL negotiated a two-year deal with Outdoor Life Network that could be extended up to six years.
Aside from specials on RVs and boating, OLN's contribution to sports broadcasting to this point includes coverage of this year's Tour de France, and yearly tape-delayed coverage of the Gravity Games.
Like I said, this is either a sign that OLN is going to vault into the cable powerhouse realm occupied by ESPN, CNN and TNT, or (more likely), the NHL is sliding closer and closer to minor-league status in the U.S.
This means the NHL now doesn't have a U.S. free TV contract or a contract with cable-sports leader ESPN. This can't bode well for viewership.
Other sports leagues can now blow their noses on the relatively puny money advertisers and TV networks are apparently paying to be associated with professional hockey.
The NHL has no marketable superstars that transcend the sport (maybe Pittsburgh first-round pick Sidney Crosby will become that, but not as of now.) The NHL has little mass-appeal. The NHL is still expensive, even though most teams are lowering ticket prices in the wake of the lockout.
The NHL is struggling. It might even be dying. Something big, bigger than baseball's homerun record chase of 1998, is going to have to happen to rescue hockey's top pro league.
When a purported major-league sport is downgraded from ESPN and ABC to OLN, it's losing a lot more than alphabetical placement in the alphabet soup of cable networks.
Hockey is an indoor sport, anyway. What is it doing on the Outdoor Life Network?