Target marketing: Roughly 50 percent of the NHL’s fans live outside the market of their favorite team. When I logged into NHL.com—dubbed ThePortal for the playoffs—Tuesday night, the site sniffed the IP address from New York and started pitching me out-of-market games as I looked up various matches. A fan in Seattle who checks out the Washington Capitals-New York Rangers match tonight would be offered that game if it’s being streamed live but since I’m in New York, where the game would be blacked out, I wouldn’t get the message. Instead, when I called up the Chicago Blackhawks-Calgary Flames preview, I was offered a chance to “watch it live.” Clicking on that took me through to the GameCenter Live checkout counter.

So far, the biggest day included the first Caps-Rangers game. The league is also starting to see the payoff from creating a relational database with info from NHL>com registered users, NHL.com shoppers, fans who have registered for a GameCenter Live trial, etc. Conversions within the freely accessible GameCenter are running 200 percent, compared to NHL.com and direct e-mail.

Pricing: GameCenter Live sold day passes last year for $14.95; when the day pass was reintroduced a couple of weeks before this season ended to take advantage of Cup races, the price jumped to $19.95. The full Race for the Cup package runs $79 for “select” games and access to the Replay game archive. Nili R. Doft, senior director of Direct and Digital Marketing, told me: “We felt that at $19.95 we were still under a $20 price point and wouldn’t see much of a sticker difference in last year’s price of $14.95.” Why not go lower and possibly increase the online audience? Two reasons: Breaking $10 would be a lot more volume but would it be twice the volume to make up for the revenue hit? And the price of the day pass sends anyone who might want to watch a series to the playoff pack. Doft added: “Having the day pass at $19.95 and the fuller package at $79, we’re seeing more people take the Race for the Cup option. A greater percent are paying $79. We want that shift.” Last year, day passes made up 51 percent of sales; this year it’s 44 percent.

Imagine what the NHL could do if it offered a full slate of games. This year’s package of up to 24 playoff games—19 in the first round out of a possible 56—is a splash in the bucket. And it doesn’t extend throughout the playoffs.