If you're a baseball fan, you probably remember the strike of 1994. I remember walking into Wal-Mart on the day before the strike was supposed to go down and seeing a display rack full of white T-shirts that had the word "STRIKE" with a big red X over it. The thought of not having a World Series had people genuinely worried.

The strike happened, and the World Series didn't. Baseball fans lost interest. Baseball's Great Depression went on for the next three and a half years, until Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire came along and saved the day with a stunning home run race in 1998.

What killed baseball is that it had nothing that fans were on the edge of their seats to get back. The two best teams in baseball in 1994, the Montreal Expos and the Chicago White Sox, were hardly dynasties in the making. That unbelievable Expos team broke up shortly thereafter and the White Sox were as inconsistent back then as they are now. When baseball came back, people just weren't interested anymore.

The only thing that can save a sport from suffering post-strike syndrome is to have something worth looking forward to; something that fans crave in its absence. With that in mind, the National Hockey League is in real trouble.

The Avalanche made some impressive moves in the offseason; reuniting Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya will be something special to watch. Without Patrick Roy, though, they have no shot — but picking up Curtis Joseph in today's NHL waiver draft could help them.

The Red Wings just keep getting older. This season appears to be Mario Lemiuex's last. The NHL's hottest young star, Atlanta Thrashers winger Dany Heatley, just smashed his sports car into a highway median and has been charged with reckless driving.

As if it couldn't get any worse for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, a lockout at the end of this upcoming season will likely scrap the entire 2004-2005 season. The end result could be catastrophic for the NHL. We all saw what it did to baseball. The pain would be tenfold for the NHL. Baseball was doing fine before the strike, not even great, just fine.

Hockey, on the other hand, is at an all-time low, and a year without hockey could put the NHL on the same level as, say, professional soccer — low revenue, empty stadiums, quirky marketing techniques, etc. In other words, going to an NHL game in three years might be just like going to a minor league hockey game. (You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been to a minor league hockey game.)

The league has plenty of young stars, but none of them can help save hockey. Heatley and Ilya Kovalchuk are stuck in Atlanta, a town where hockey is an afterthought. Martin Havlat is tucked away in cozy Ottawa, Canada. Marian Gaborik is going to miss a good chunk of the season in Minnesota while he holds out for a better contract.

The one guy I think has a chance to save hockey is Tuomo Ruutu of the Chicago Blackhawks. Only those in the hockey loop probably recognize the name, but soon the casual sports fan will see the name Ruutu and easily recognize it.

Hockey's Future Magazine, the premiere hockey prospect magazine, had Ruutu rated as the best position player not playing in the NHL last year. He has all the skills: he's big, he's physical, he has a nose for the goal. Ruutu scored on his first NHL shift early in the preseason, and when head coach Brian Sutter has experimented with him between Eric Daze and Steve Sullivan, the results have been outstanding.

Ruutu is a hockey fan's dream: a guy who can score but can also flatten opposing players onto the glass. He has never been afraid to hit anyone, and violence, as we all know, sells in the NHL.

On top of it all, Chicago is a big market, which will provide Ruutu with the kind of exposure that could make people excited about watching him, not just Chicago fans, but hockey fans in general. The Chicago market is extremely valuable. (Remember, Wayne Gretzky didn't host Saturday Night Live until he played in Los Angeles.)

In short, Ruutu could be hockey's savior. A movement to promote hockey's young stars, especially Ruutu in big market Chicago, is something that Bettman needs to consider. Otherwise, hockey as we know it could implode.

Mike Szwaja is a junior in communications. He can be reached at sports@dailyillini.com.