Sports

GREAT PLAYOFF MOMENTS GOING UNSEEN BY MOST

SO, WHEN Alex Ovechkin went down and Sidney Crosby went the other way to score on the breakaway that sealed the confrontation between the headline acts who drove each other to almost unimaginable heights, was that the NHL’s equivalent of Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s 15th-round knockdown of Muhammad Ali in the 1971 “Fight of the Century” at the Garden?

A strong case can be made that it was, with the Peoples’ Champ going down at the hands of a relentless opponent who attacked with fury. But if you weren’t watching at the moment, you probably didn’t see it anywhere. You probably didn’t see it as the lead it should have been on all those highlights shows that run round the clock on, oh, what’s that network called again? Oh, right, ESPN.

If the first two rounds of the playoffs have been a showcase for the NHL’s greatest young players — start with Crosby and Ovechkin, go directly to Evgeni Malkin, then to Eric Staal, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews — it also has exposed the folly of Gary Bettman’s love affair with Versus and the grudge he carries against ESPN.

It has exposed the NHL’s empty approach to a television strategy, even as Bettman risks dislocating his shoulders in patting himself on the back for his league’s innovative approach to blacking itself out.

The commissioner may have been justified in not taking ESPN’s crumbs coming out of the lockout. He may have been justified placing the league’s immediate future into the hands of Versus, owned by Ed Snider’s Comcast, by the way.

But Bettman was not justified in granting Versus a contract that included unilateral options for the network to retain exclusivity through 2010-11 — a six-year commitment as crippling in its own way as the Rangers’ six-year commitment to Wade Redden.

The NHL Network is no help. Somehow, this network doesn’t seem to have the authority to pick up local feeds. When Bruins-Hurricanes Game 7 was being played in Boston, the NHL Network was showing a 300th rerun of a Patrik Elias feature.

That Game 7, by the way, could not be seen by Cablevision subscribers in Westchester (and parts of Connecticut) even by people with subscriptions to the NHL’s Center Ice package. Every channel on the system was dedicated to baseball. So an NHL Game 7 was played in the dark . . . until Versus, which did not go live to the game between periods of its Anaheim-Detroit Game 7 telecast, joined in progress.

Progress?

Hardly.

*

But really, the ongoing television fiasco isn’t fundamentally different from the court case in Phoenix, for they — and the erratic officiating — all come under the umbrella of, “If it isn’t Bettman’s idea, the NHL doesn’t think it’s a good one.”

Of course, there is going to be another team in southern Ontario, and it may even be owned one day by Jim Balsillie. Bank on it. But the NHL is going to use that region as expansion territory, all the better to split up to $300M in fees without a dime of it flowing to the players. All of the other 29 owners will bank on that.

The notion of fighting to keep a team in Phoenix at the expense of moving another one into Ontario is, even more absurdly, founded upon the national footprint-national television contract strategy devised by Bettman in the last decade.

The footprint is invisible.

*

Yes, it’s true, the game is better since the league adopted the policies put forth by the Shanahan Summit.

(“Wait, I never called it the ‘Shanahan Summit,’ you know,” Brendan Shanahan said a while ago. “It’s not like I have ‘Shanahan Summit, Brendan Shanahan Chairman’ letterhead.”)

But it’s also true that the NHL could have implemented policies to open up the game and showcase its stars at any time, but made the conscious decision not to do based purely on economic reasons.

The league didn’t want its most talented teams to dominate; didn’t want its high-payroll teams to strut their superiority against expansion and low-revenue clubs.

The league didn’t want a passel of 50-goal scorers, not with unchecked salary arbitration.

And so the NHL conspired to give lesser clubs a chance by ignoring obstruction and interference, and all those things that in fact were ignored just the other day in overtime of Carolina-Boston Game 7.

In doing so, in establishing that environment, by jiggering the competition, the league robbed of us potential playoff showdowns between Jaromir Jagr and Eric Lindros; between Jagr and Peter Forsberg; between powerhouse teams.

Now, they’ve gotten it right. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t the arsonists who then take credit for later putting out the fire.

*

The question isn’t whether Brian Burke would accept the $25.5M over six years remaining on Ryan Malone‘s contract in order to move up to grab John Taveras in the Entry Draft — of course he would, just as would any team with deep pockets — but it’s whether the NHL would allow Tampa Bay to move down five slots in the draft in order to shed payroll.

OK, you try and explain to Cam Ward why he has to sit behind Martin Brodeur and/or Roberto Luongo for Canada at the 2010 Olympics.

larry.brooks@nypost.com