BY KATE ROTH

the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were in progress, hockey was all anyone could talk about. But now that the Olympic Games have officially ended it seems as though the sport has fallen off the face of the earth.

It was nice to see all of the media and spectator interest in hockey during the Olympic period, but it would have been even better to see this carry over into the second half of the NHL season.
If you asked the average sports fan when the NHL trade deadline occurred this season I’d be willing to bet that the majority of them would have no clue that it occurred just this past Wednesday. It seems as though the moment the Olympics are over the media stops caring about the sport, which in my opinion is the exact opposite of what they should be doing.
There was just a burst of new interest in the sport of hockey created by the Olympic Games and the media needs to use that to its advantage and cover more stories in the sport of hockey and gain more attention.

The media had many new hockey fans eager to learn more about the sport right in their grasp and they let them slip away by neglecting to pay any attention to the NHL. Instead, they focused their attention to the NFL Draft, which is still two months away.

To me it seems as though the media really dropped the ball on this one. This is the perfect NHL season to grab onto since hockey gained some popularity through the Olympics. There are some very tight divisional and wildcard races going on in the league as the season moves towards its end. There were also many great trade rumors and trades made this past Wednesday throughout the league that could have made some great media stories, but instead we got to hear about where every single sports analyst thinks Johnny Football is going to be drafted.

Having the media focus on hockey during the Olympics was great, I just wish it had carried over into the NHL season. It would have been great for the sport of hockey and also have given us sport fans something else to listen to rather than the same old NFL draft stories over and over again.