It’s been just more than four years since NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced that team owners were locking out players for the 2004-05 season, and, much to my surprise, professional hockey in North America still isn’t dead.

That’s not saying much. Hockey may not be dead, but it’s certainly debilitated, just as if the lockout was a stroke or a heart attack. Apparently people still care about the sport, but those people are the diehards — those sports fans who were raised on it and now can’t give it up. The casual hockey fan is teetering on the brink of extinction.

I consider myself to be a fairly knowledgeable general sports fan. I could articulate in a coherent narrative how the Boston Celtics went from holding the fifth pick in the draft to holding a championship trophy in a single season, or the reasons the Dallas Cowboys are in such disarray, or why the Yankees aren’t in the World Series. I know the NHL started its season earlier this month, but before I started writing this, I couldn’t have told you exactly when that was. I had no idea how many games had been played or who was atop the standings. I think I would be impressed if I was able to name a single player on half the teams. The vast majority of my NHL knowledge still comes from EA Sports’ NHL ’97.

Now, I’m not so egotistical as to believe that just because I don’t care about the NHL no one else does either. Hockey still has its fans, enough for the first post-lockout season to set new NHL records for attendance.

But I find it hard to believe that any league that can’t get a network more prestigious than Versus to show its games still counts as a major player in American sports — even Arena Football has games on NBC every spring.

Estimates put the NHL’s total annual revenue — which includes ticket sales, merchandise, TV contracts and sponsorships — at around $2.27 billion a year. In 2006 alone, the NFL made $3.74 billion just from its television rights.

Basically, what was once the Big Four collection of North American sports leagues is now the Big Three. The MLB, the NBA and the NFL — they still count. To the sporting audience and, perhaps more importantly, the sporting media, the NHL is only a step or two above pro boxing and Major League Soccer. Think about the last time the PTI guys talked about an NHL story that didn’t involve superstars Sidney Crosby or Alexander Ovechkin. As far as ESPN is concerned, the NHL is a two-man league until someone starts a particularly violent fight, checks a guy through the glass or barehands a save.

If that’s the case, then really the best comparison for the NHL would be tennis or golf — a second-tier sport that makes headlines four times a year or so, unless one of its major stars is involved. In the NHL’s case, those four times would be the start of the season, the outdoor game that takes place each January, the start of the playoffs and the Stanley Cup Finals. But a team sport — especially one such as hockey, where constant contact in a walled-off arena makes injuries like Crosby’s high ankle sprain last year all too common — isn’t built to run on a pair of stars alone. At any given time, there are 28 other teams out there playing. So what about them?

But the real question is, if at one point the Big Three was a Big Four, then isn’t there a hole in the sports landscape? If we’ve already proven that we can support four major sports leagues, don’t we have room for one more? Sports media outlets have grown exponentially thanks to the Internet and the ever-expanding ESPN franchise. We can’t find room for one more?

Well, not really. Because instead of just one more, we’ve filled that hole with a dozen different alternatives — all streamed live over the Internet or broadcast to us courtesy of ESPN 8, “The Ocho.”

Hockey’s not dead; it’s just faded into a new niche. The diehards still know where to find it; the rest of us can make do with English soccer, auto racing of every kind, mixed martial arts, championship volleyball matches, lacrosse, and even, though I shudder to mention it, poker. Before, the Big Four was closer to the Only Four. Now we have more options than we know what to do with. The NHL’s loss is our gain.

— Contact Eric Betts.