Do you know who Anze Kopitar is?

Be honest now, I won’t judge. Ask your friends, or the stranger you’re currently wedged next to awkwardly on the Cliff shuttle. Do they know who Anze Kopitar is?
Chances are you don’t, and they don’t. So who is he? He happens to be the third-best player in the NHL — playing in a league in which only the top two players, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, have imprinted themselves onto our sports popular culture.

Such is the fate of hockey fans, who are made to feel like lepers whenever we want to catch an out-of-town game at a sports bar.

For me, as a native New Yorker, the experience of being a New York Islanders fan — struggling to find live web-streams of games online and depending on only one local media outlet for team news — is, in a way, humbling.

As a New York fan, I’m used to sports relevance as a matter of right, and can generally expect to see the teams and questions I’m passionate about discussed on ESPN on a regular basis; my experience rooting for the Islanders provides me, I imagine, with a glimpse into what life as a fan of a low-market team like the Kansas City Royals must be like — except that, in the latter case, their players at least matter for fantasy sports purposes.

This must end. I, for one, will no longer accept life as a sports recluse every winter, after baseball season ends and my New York Jets cease being able to keep up the pretense of being competitive. And if hockey is ready to finally make its post-lockout comeback from the inferno of niche-sport hell (professional bass-fishing and mixed martial arts make for poor bed-fellows), there are reasons for hope. It doesn’t have to be this way forever.

For starters, many of the unnecessary, rightfully maligned new and expansion teams born in the 1990s are finally enjoying real prosperity, despite toiling in markets that aren’t traditional hockey-havens. The San Jose Sharks, probably the greatest success story of ‘90s expansion, are perennial Stanley Cup contenders and, with Dany Heatley and Joe Thornton, boast two of the sport’s most marketable stars. The Tampa Bay Lightning, which played its first game in 1992, won its first Stanley Cup the year before the lockout and is on its way back up, as last year’s first overall pick Steve Stamkos matures alongside all-world defenseman Victor Hedman, the second overall pick in the most recent draft.

Meanwhile, two other seemingly misguided warm-weather clubs, the Atlanta Thrashers and Phoenix Coyotes, have at least developed to the point where their contending for the playoffs isn’t a laughable concept.

While football forces its most loyal fans to shell out big bucks for unnecessary personal seat licenses, and while basketball and baseball fans are consistently priced out of opportunities to make the most of their fan experiences, hockey can reasonably claim to be the most fan-friendly major sport. Tickets to games are generally cheaper than their counterparts in other leagues, and the visceral experience of attending a hockey game — feeling the whiplash as players are checked into the boards in front of you, being covered in ice flakes and rising in unison when the goal horn sounds — can hardly be matched.

And then there’s fighting. There’s no reason to beat around the bush; sports has been historically, and still is, a civilized and socially acceptable facsimile for war. Football may come closest, in that it actually permits open-field tackling, but the appeal is that of a melee. Hockey fighting, meanwhile, pits two warriors against each other in single combat, as heavyweights plan their bouts strategically to change the tempo and reverse the energy of a contest. No other sport has yet to compete effectively with hockey in its ability to combine strategy, finesse and skills with a legitimate outlet for vestigial male bloodlust.

It’s hard to understand the obstacles to hockey’s return to the mainstream. The lockout hurt; but baseball eventually recovered, reinvigorated, from its own cancelled season. The game are low scoring, but it’s not soccer; offensive opportunities are commonplace.

If you attend a game and watch a team held scoreless, than it’s a near certainty that they saw a goalie stand on his head or an overpowering defensive performance.

Is it nativism? Maybe in part, but it hardly seems like hockey is any more dominated by eastern Europeans than baseball is by players from Latin America. If anything, the European style of play is one that would be more appealing to the casual fan, stressing speed and scoring.

So maybe America would be telling the truth if it told hockey “it’s not you, it’s me.” When you do get over your hockey hang-ups, you know where to find me, staring at a shaky feed of that night’s Islanders game cursing at Jeff Tambellini for forgetting how to forecheck and quitting in his own zone. And hopefully by then, you’ll know what that means.

— Contact Asher Smith.