Shaq Could be NHL's Skating Saviour

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Jon Spoelstra has an idea for how the NHL could recover from one of the most venom-laced work stoppages in pro sports history: make an offer to basketball star Shaquille O'Neal.

"They'd get worldwide publicity and they'd let fans know that they were still alive," says Spoelstra, a marketing expert who wrote Ice to the Eskimos and is a one-time president of the New Jersey Nets.

"Who cares if he can't skate? Just put him in net with his size-22 basketball shoes and pads that are 5 feet tall."

It's doubtful, of course, that the NHL would take Spoelstra up on his suggestion.

After all, it's not even a new idea ? the minor league Indianapolis Ice three years ago signed 7-foot-7 basketball centre Manute Bol to a contract. (Bol sat on the bench for a period before leaving the arena because of swollen feet.)

Even so, Spoelstra's suggestion underscores the hurdles the league faces in the coming weeks.

The NHL may need to rely on the ridiculous to get noticed.

Think it was hard for the NHL to convince players of the need for a salary cap and revenue sharing?

Try luring back a 13-year-old one-time fan who got through last winter spending his free time playing Xbox Live or surfing the Internet instead of watching the neutral-zone trap for three hours.

While the NHL may fill buildings in markets like Toronto and Montreal, a number of North America's top marketers say the league should be willing to go to unorthodox lengths to salve its battered relations with fans, especially those in non-traditional markets like Columbus and Atlanta.

For starters, Keith Bruce, chief marketing officer with SportsMark Management Group Ltd. in San Francisco, suggests the NHL pare the price of walk-up and single-game tickets by 50 per cent for the first month of home games this season, and even offer free entry to all kids 12 years old and under.

"This gets families back into the sport and creates a new stream of loyalists who will easily forget the labour strife," Bruce says. "The younger they are, the more likely they are to forgive. Kids were the first group of fans to come back to baseball after the long strike in 1994."</div>

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Shaq could be the most dominant goalie of all time he played hockey. Imagine if Shaq could actually skate and gave a player a hipcheck or ran a player up into the boards.