I would bet the cross-section of people who appreciated George's fashion-forwardness and who watch the HNIC panel is fairly limited.
That's a problem for the game, though. George was an effort to bring in younger viewers, but nobody is going to tune into a sport because the panel are fashionably dressed. Hockey is still dominated by old-school mindsets. The number of complaints in this thread about tight suits is a fitting reminder.
But to bring in younger viewers the culture needs a bigger change than George. It would start with marketing the personalities of its athletes, instead of turning all of them into sound-byte spitting robots. I recall asking Burke at a talk he gave at the UofC a couple of years ago that, if he demands that his teams play an entertaining brand of hockey, how this is consistent with media training of athletes. His reply was that he demands respect for the game and hockey attracts those kinds of people.
Well you're also going to get those kinds of viewers and turn off younger audiences who have an endless of alternatives for where to spend their entertainment time whose brands resonate more with the demographic. The other major sports all have players that ooze personality (too much at times, even), and hockey tries its best to squelch all of it.
Who can identify with Connor McDavid? Is there a more milquetoast personality in the game? Same goes for Sidney Crosby for that matter.
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