Venerable hockey brand Bauer is back in the hands of an ice hockey enthusiast. On Thursday, Nike (NYSE:NKE) sold the brand to private equity investor W. Graeme Roustan, a private equity investor who grew up in Montreal and now lives in Florida. Also involved in the purchase was investment firm Kohlberg & Co. of Mount Kisco, NY.

Nike paid $395 million for Bauer in 1994, betting that inline hockey would grow the brand. That bad bet, and other design mistakes, led Nike to put the company up for sale last fall. Roustan, a self-described "blade guy" paid a reported $200 million.

Over the next two years, the Nike swoosh will be phased out as the brand returns to the focus of ice hockey.

Not so long ago, the NHL seemed like it was on the brink of losing what little cultural relevance it had left. The lockout irritated the sport's loyal fans, and less-loyal fans simply lost interest. Attendance was weak, and what were thought to have been important contests were getting beaten in the ratings by arena football games.

Now, Nashville investor David Freeman has led a group buying the Nashville Predators franchise for $193 million -- a strong vote of confidence in the league's future.

The last NHL team to be sold was the St. Louis Blues in 2006. The Blues fetched $150 million. An NHL-commissioned report found that, during the 2002-2003 season, the NHL's 30 teams lost a total of $273 million.

It seems like efforts to rein in player salaries may be making the league more competitive financially, and the NHL could be back on the road to profitability.

Now all it needs is a young stud to revive mainstream interest the way that Wayne Gretzky did many years ago. If the league can get behind promoting him, 20-year old Penguins phenom Sidney Crosby could be their man.

Since the end of the season-long lockout, the TV ratings for NHL games have been floating somewhere between beach volleyball and Arena Football. In what could be seen as an act of desperation, the league has signed a deal with NeuLion to offer webcasts of all NHL games. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The league's Web site, NHL.com, and all the team Web sites will sell "Center Ice," a package of out-of-market games now available on satellite and cable TV. Fans will be charged about $15 a night, or $169 to subscribe for the entire season. About 45 games will be transmitted each week."

The move makes sense for the NHL -- While watching hockey games on a computer will probably only be appealing to diehard hockey fans, it seems like the aficionados are the only ones bothering to follow hockey at all these days. My question is "Why?' There was speculation that the emergence of Pittsburgh Penguins phenom Sidney Crosby would revive the sport but even all the success that 19 year-old has had has failed to catapult his name out of the hockey world.

But the NHL appears to be taking the right steps. The league became one of the first to sign a deal with YouTube to offer highlights on the site. As the Journal wrote, "the NHL has been pioneering new methods of reaching fans." But will any of it matter, or is the sad truth that no one cares about hockey anymore?

Could there be a better example of hockey's irrelevance to General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) than what happened last Saturday afternoon when the network quit showing Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres just as it headed into overtime?

Faced with the dilemma of covering a game which could theoretically go last hours more, NBC went to the Preakness Stakes 20 minutes early (at 4:40 pm) while hockey was switched to Versus, the league's cable outlet which is a available in about half as many homes as NBC.

And Versus had trouble with the transfer, so viewers had no idea what was up until the game finally reappeared. NBC would have better served running recaps of the dreadful 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin, Italy (the lowest rated in Winter Olympics history) or maybe infomericals for the 2008 Summer Olympics leading up the Preakness. At least those could have perfect time constraints so as not to affect coverage of the horse race.

Hockey fans got screwed because NBC focused on the Preakness, which for sure makes it more money and gets better ratings. The network's deal with the NHL is a revenue-sharing arrangement for which NBC gets zero dollars from the league is why.

But why inflict that arrogance, which begins and ends with NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, on the handful of hockey viewers who bothered to watch?

By the way, the game ended midway through the first overtime with Ottawa winning to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Ever wonder why NBC broadcasts hockey?

Like arena football, the NHL is a time filler. It costs the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) network next to nothing to produce so any ratings benefits it gets are gravy, That's why NBC has to be happy the New York Rangers squared their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series against Buffalo on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. That guarantees a Game Six back in New York on Sunday afternoon following Friday night's fifth game in Buffalo.

And since one team will have a chance to clinch and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals against the New Jersey Devils or Ottawa Senators, ratings presumably will rise. The network can hope the game does better than Game Three, which drew a 1.8 Nielsen rating in New York, compared with a 2.1 for Fox's coverage of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Aaron's 499 and a 1.9 on CBS for its broadcast of the PGA Tour Byron Nelson Classic.

Those ratings are decidedly better than comparable NHL playoff games a year ago, but the fact that hockey trails every other major sport is worrisome.

The game does very well in regional markets such as Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis/St. Paul, but the days of drawing ratings comparable to baseball, basketfall and football are in the distant past. It hasn't helped that the NHL had a falling out with Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) ESPN following the lockout-lost 2004-05 season and chose Comcast Corp's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) VS network (formerly the Outdoor Life Network) as its cable home. The price tag: $67.5 million per year for two years versus $120 million per year for the previous five seasons on ESPN. Last year's average playoff rating on VS: a paltry 0.3%.

What can the NHL hope for June 2007? That the top U.S. media market has a team in the Finals for the first time since 1994.