Whatever happened to hockey?

There used to be a very exciting professional sport in America. It was as physically demanding as basketball or soccer, played at the speed of lightning, and combined ballet-like grace and brutish physical violence. It was called hockey.

I am telling you this because tonight, unbeknownst to many of you, marks the beginning of the Stanley Cup, a sports event that used to be on a par with baseball's World Series. A team from one of the Carolinas is playing a team from the capital of Alberta, Canada. That city's come-hither slogan: ``It's Cooler in Edmonton."

Good luck finding the game. It is being broadcast by the Outdoor Life Network, best known for 24/7 bass-a-paloozas and the little-watched Tour de France. Today on OLN: ``Bob Izumi's Real Fishing Show" and ``On the Water With Hank Parker ": ``Today Hank is accompanied by his son Bill and old friend Frank Oelerich of Mann's Bait Company." And the Stanley Cup.

I remember when hockey was a major sport. (``It is a major sport," insists a National Hockey League spokeswoman, not very convincingly.) I spent my 17th birthday at the Boston Garden, in an era when visits by New York Rangers defenseman Brad Park always elicited colorful reactions. As a summer camper in Canada, I ate Rice Chex with a picture of Montreal goalie Gump Worsley on the box.

I asked the three 13-year-old boys in my carpool if they could name one active player on the Boston Bruins. Only one could, and he named two. Needless to say, he could name the entire Boston Red Sox infield and was hyper-aware that Alex Cora had subbed for Mark Loretta at second base earlier in the week.

What happened? There are all the usual excuses. The game doesn't televise well. It's too violent for the suburban soccer moms; it's not violent enough for the core fan base. More to the point, hockey has been out-hustled and out-marketed by more aggressive competitors such as NASCAR and youth-oriented ``extreme" sports. Say what you will about the oily National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern and his unholy alliance with Nike; he's kept his sport in the game.

Hockey is the sick man of US sports; it gets operated on every few years, and each time the patient dies a little more. Ten years ago, Fox introduced what is now called ``the ill-fated glowing puck," a hockey puck with an embedded battery and infrared transmitter that showed up as a luminous blue dot on the TV screen. When the puck flew toward the net faster than 70 miles an hour, it turned red and grew a comet's tail. Fox eventually dumped hockey for games that people actually watch.

Just this year the NHL introduced new rules to cut down on rough play and open up the game. If you don't know the difference between the blue lines and the red line -- and I forgive you -- these ``dramatic" changes are completely meaningless.

An excuse worth taking seriously is last season's labor stoppage. Because of a dispute over salary caps, the NHL missed the entire 2004-05 season. Last year I was thinking of writing a column on the theme: ``Hockey's gone; has anyone noticed?"

NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur says the league has come back stronger than ever after the hiatus, with attendance up 4 percent. But the TV ratings, which establish the sport's national profile, have been risible. Earlier this year, Newsday reported that on hockey-mad Long Island, home to an important NHL franchise, an Ivy League women's college basketball game got triple the TV ratings of either the Islanders or the New Jersey Devils. Memo to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman: You have a problem.

I read the paper , I listen to the talk shows. I know the Bruins still sell out when a puck-worthy opponent like the Rangers or Canadiens comes to town. I know that the Bruins chintzy owner says he is finally -- belatedly? -- going to get his act together, assigning new responsibilities to his more mediagenic son, and hiring a highly touted new general manager who played for the World's Greatest University.

Who doesn't applaud that? Anything and everything that helps bring back the greatest show on ice is more than welcome and long overdue.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.His e-dress is beam@globe.com.