Sam Donnellon | NHL's future on TV can't be worse than past

HERE'S THE obvious next step for the NHL.

Pay-per-view.

On demand. The cutting edge.

The future.

Think about it, Mr. Bettman. This is the next move in your mission to explore the world around you, to seek out new networks and new channels, to boldly go where no league has gone before . . .

You're not the Klingon everyone says you are.

You're another Captain Kirk, I say.

Your league is already light-years ahead of those other leagues, I say.

That's why it's so hard to find, right?

"Versus." What a name!

What a network!

What a place to watch hockey, night in, night out.

(Psst, yo, Captain Gary . . . Where is it, exactly? I won't tell.)

Never mind. When we get done with that league of yours, Versus will be just another fuel stop on your search for the undiscovered country.

(Hint No. 1: The undiscovered country begins with U.)

(Hint No. 2: A cable channel is named after the undiscovered country.)

(Hint No. 3: You live in the undiscovered country.)

OK, OK, I'll tell you. It's us, Captain. The USA. We're the ones you can't seem to locate, the ones with a cloaking device.

Here's the key to finding the undiscovered country, Captain: You make them come to you.

I know, I know; you kind of did that when you took your product way, way, up that cable dial, giving rise to a new sports injury known as "Versus thumb."

I am sure I was not the only remaining hockey fan in the undiscovered country who suffered this injury Saturday, when NBC switched to the Preakness Stakes a full hour before race time rather than continue into overtime of Game 5 between Buffalo and Ottawa. The game was moved to Versus, we were told, and thus the trick - if you were lucky enough to be one of its 72 million subscribers - was to remember on which of the channels between 20 and 200 Versus was hidden.

Call it the game within the game.

Anyway, the pain is so great, I now change channels with my left hand.

That injury will be rendered obsolete, Captain, once you make your playoff games pay-per-view events.

Here's how it works:

First, buy lots of billboard space, telling everyone this year's Stanley Cup championship is the biggest ever, and that its champion will go down as the greatest pound-for-pound hockey team of all time.

It doesn't have to be true. It doesn't even have to be logical.

If boxing and wrestling pay-per-view events have taught us anything, it is that we will pay good money to see something we probably would not have watched for free.

Consider: Boxing is on cable television all the time. Hardly anyone watches, and you hardly have to strain your thumb to watch most of them.

But you buy some billboard space, run some informercials, throw a little "Biggest ever" talk around, charge $55 a household and . . . well, you have yourself the makings of a super megafight.

Or a mega superfight. I'm never sure which one is bigger.

Just take a look at that last super megafight earlier in the month. Didn't think you cared a hoot about Oscar De La Hoya's legacy, did you? And then, in, like, Warp 5, you did! Two months ago, you thought Floyd Mayweather Jr. was that old guy with the straw hat on "Hee Haw," didn't you?

Now?

Now he's the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time.

Or at least until the next super megafight.

A record 2.15 million households ponied up for the pleasure of watching 12 rounds that at times resembled a Devils intrasquad game. HBO, which ran the pay-per-view event, collected a cool $120 million.

That's $55 million more than Versus gave you for an entire season of games.

But you know that, Captain. Just as you know why NBC bounced your overtime game Saturday in favor of a dead horse. They paid millions to air the horse race. They paid you nothing, just made you a partner.

Tony Soprano treats his partners better.

Well, I say it stops now, Captain. You've tried everything else to penetrate the undiscovered country, and you are running low on air, not to mention dignity.

So really, what do you have to lose?

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Send e-mail to donnels@phillynews.com. For recent columns, go to http://go.philly.com/donnellon.