I am not a particularly savvy hockey fan. On the rare occasion that I tune in to a game, I often mistakenly assume that a player is mucking when he is, in fact, grinding, and vice versa. But what I am, for better or worse, is a Pittsburgher, and so, if I were king of the city, I'd award the Penguins a brand-new, state-of-the-art arena in which they could shoot wrist shots through the five hole (hockey term!) all the livelong day. The reason that I would do this is because, all things being equal, I think that it rarely does a town much good to lose one of its professional sports franchises.

Frank Nepa is a writer living in Shadyside (fnepa@aol.com).

But that's just me, dreaming and spending money that isn't mine on something that I don't think is absolutely crucial. Others aren't as whimsical. I listen to a lot of sports-talk radio (I have absolutely no life) and it seems, just from hearing what's going on there, that the citizenry shares my basic hope, but not necessarily my rationale. These people -- hosts and callers both -- would have you convinced that the loss of the local hockey team would rank right up there with the loss of oxygen throughout the region (although let's see oxygen try to split two New Jersey Devils defensemen and beat the goaltender on the short side like Evgeni Malkin can do.) But the politicians who ultimately will decide whether to build a new arena to house the Penguins must consider one important factor that is rarely, if ever, voiced in these parts: Professional hockey is dead.

Now, wait a minute, before everybody gets their No. 87 Sidney Crosby thermal underwear in a bunch and tries to crosscheck me down Fifth Avenue, I want you to know that I certainly realize that the sport is not dead locally -- in fact, if Penguins fans became any more rabid, they would need shots. But this is a town where many people still walk around wearing acid-wash jeans and listening to REO Speedwagon and those have been dead at least since Bush 41.

Hockey, on a national level, is over. Here's how I know: In our sports-obsessed country, the primary outlet for televised National Hockey League games is not CBS or Fox or ESPN -- which, for want of programming, regularly airs such "sports" as poker, pool, bull riding and bowling -- but something called Versus. I had not even known that such a network existed, so when I was recently told where I could find the NHL's All-Star Game telecast, I thought they were saying, "Verses," which I assumed was a channel devoted to 24-hour-a-day karaoke.

Here's how else I know: That aforementioned All-Star Game -- played on Wednesday, Jan. 24 -- drew a 0.7 Nielsen rating, a 76 percent drop in viewership from the previous time the All-Star Game was played, in 2004. Even more telling, while the game was the most-watched cable show in Pittsburgh that night (as well as in Buffalo), it did not even rank among the top 20 cable shows in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington or Miami -- NHL markets all. Speaking of televised karaoke, that same night's broadcast of American Idol drew 37 million viewers, a fair bit more than the 672,000 lonely souls who saw fit to tune in to hockey's biggest night of the season so far, wouldn't you say?

These are all facts and what they tell us is that hockey, when skating down the ice along with all of the other sports and entertainment choices at the disposal of the American consumer these days, not only doesn't shoot and score, but it fires the puck into the stands and beans a spectator in the head. In other words, it just doesn't have enough people out there who like it.

Which is not necessarily a condemnation of it. Just because something isn't widely adored doesn't mean that it's bad. (For example, not that many people are all that enamored with me, and I'm a swell guy.) But the viability of a professional sport these days is measured by its appeal to television viewers -- that's where the money comes from to pay the athletes -- and did I mention the 0.7 rating for the All-Star Game? Almost as many people were watching my microwave that night.

And so what worries me is that if the nation as a whole doesn't have enough interest in hockey, will it much matter that the people around here love it as if it were their firstborn? Because even if the local powers-that-be make the hockey fans happy and decide to build the Penguins a new place to play, what good will it do if there aren't any games to be played there? What will we do with that building if its primary tenant suddenly has no use for it?

I guess, if nothing else, we'll need a place to have American Idol tryouts.