the answer to the question is because 98% of Americans have never played hockey even as children.. the more a sport is played in a country the more popular it is even with people who have never played it.. pretty simple
People always say that but if that were true soccer would be the number one sports by a wide margin.
Also Las Vegas is a hot hockey town even though nobody there played it as a child.
IMO there’s two problems with hockey,
1. bad officiating - making the game fair is like liberalism on ice. Low skilled plugs are allowed to mug or even injure better players.
and
2. Coaching
Many NHL coaches don’t believe in maximizing the best players. They’d rather have 4 mediocre lines than one great line and 3 more moderate ones. That’s been true here in Pittsburgh where the coaches have surrounded a truly great player with some truly terrible wingers. The good news is that some newer talent have coaches setting up players to succeed. Washington always set up their best scorer to succeed and now Toronto, Colorado and Boston have done the same. The game will be better for it.