It wasn’t too long ago when I’d swear the National Hockey League’s biggest problem was not being on ESPN. Now I’d say it’s the league’s best asset.

With Barry Melrose in Tampa Bay, the self-dubbed Worldwide Leader can do what they’ve dreamed of doing since 2005; eliminate “The Mullet” from their payroll. Surprisingly, I think the suits in Bristol don't mind paying a talking head with actual knowledge and insight for a change, but they didn’t like hockey taking precedence over say, one of their own properties, like Arena Football.

I shouldn’t speculate, but I’d like to imagine Melrose would show up at the office and producers would cringe, “Oh shoot, Melrose is here,” they’d think. “Can we carve out a spot in the D-Block for hockey?”

Now they don’t have to anymore. Hockey doesn’t work for ESPN because it actually is a team sport. There aren’t brash (Barry Bonds), outspoken (Chad Johnson) superstars, nor do great individual (Bill Belichick) storylines exist. Soft spoken, relatively boring coaches get fired once a week and role players barnstorm through the league one division at a time.

And while Joe Fan spends way too much time, on company time no less, fretting about his Fantasy Pitching Staff (Do I start Beckett or Zambrano tonight?), or which QB (Cassel against Miami or Hasselbeck vs. St. Louis) to start on Sunday, you won’t find him playing Fantasy Hockey. He’s not going to brag to his sexually repressed wife about how so-and-so had a +2 last night, or how said goaltender’s GAA is the best in the Eastern Conference.

Instead she’ll hear lines like, “Honey, I got Matsui!” and rush to her divorce lawyers faster than she’ll run from a pre-nup.

Half of our league speaks broken English and our players aren’t getting arrested at the rates of their football (Pacman Jones/The Bengals/The Colts) and basketball (Don't get me started) counterparts. We don’t have players rapping (Shaq) to other players (Kobe) and asking them to “tell me how my ass tastes.” Nor can we place a token blonde (Erin Andrews) in front of a camera and expect her to break down the neutral zone trap. Those of us in the New England area saw that experiment go horribly wrong with Kathryn Tappen last winter.

Hockey is seen by those in Bristol, Connecticut as flat out boring. Its quality content, the likes of Scott Burnside and Joy Russo, is buried on the NHL page of ESPN.com, something I’d imagine only exists because the network must recognize it as a sport, no matter how much it would like not too. Sure, Wayne Gretzky made it interesting while he was dating Janet Jones, cruising around Hollywood with an ultra-slick coach and scoring goals. But Michael Phelps made swimming interesting enough to be featured on the Worldwide Hype Machine, at least for a few weeks before fading back into oblivion for another four years. Plus, Bristol ended up with the suave coach for the next decade.

As the guy who wants to see Sidney Crosby date Ashley Tisdale simply for exposure purposes, I should point out that I don’t mean ESPN, but its parent company Disney when I preach about the need to generate new fans. We all know how popular those Mighty Ducks Movies were in the early 1990’s and how they contributed to unprecedented growth in the youngest generation of fans. And we all know what a terrific job Disney has done with High School Musical, Hannah Montana and Camp Rock. But most recently, U.S. gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson signed on with Disney on a Nationwide, post-Olympic Tour with another Disney act, Jordan Pruitt and ticket sales are reportedly brisk.

The problem is, ESPN crosses the cross-promotional line and Disney doesn’t. Disney seamlessly blends its entities together without going overboard; ESPN acts shamelessly as they use all of their platforms in whatever fashion to advance ratings. The suits in Bristol have no shame. There's no limit to how low they’ll actually go in self-promotion; whether it’s the ESPY’s, ESPN Original Entertainment, the Magazine’s 12 pages of solid written content surrounded by 90 pages of GQ style photography. One at least gets the feeling that the day Miley Cyrus agrees to pose for Playboy, she’ll be ousted from the Mickey Mouse network. But let’s say Brett Farve posed for Playgirl? Lord only knows what we’d be subjected too.

To this point, Gary Bettman and the suits in New York have taken the high road. Exchanging the nicest of pleasantries about both its current partner Versus and its former TV friend back in Bristol. Get negative for a change. How about standing up for your sport, not by taking punches, but by throwing them yourself.

The deterioration of ESPN has been nothing short of a sad, silly saga and the NHL is fortunate not to be a part of it. They’ve thrown countless punches at the NHL and remind fans how boring hockey has become and how one can’t find it anywhere on the tube. The best thing to do is stay away from them and fight back.