Sunday was Hockey Day in the USA, with NBC, the NHL’s American broadcast partner, along with Versus, telecasting an entire afternoon’s worth of games, in solid hockey markets, like Buffalo, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St.Paul. It’s a great idea, picking up on Hockey Night In Canada’s similar theme north of the border, which has been an annual event for several years.
The NHL’s popularity in the United States, is sometimes ridiculed by some Canadian journalists, who will go out of their way to highlight a game, quite often in Atlanta, or earlier this season and last, Phoenix, when the attendance is poor. There are several NBA teams that have small crowds, and yet, that it is rarely highlighted by these same journalists. Similarly, Major League Baseball has teams that struggle at the box office, including, the Florida Marlins, Pittsburgh Pirates, and sometimes the Tampa Bay Rays, even with a contending team. The poor attendance for those teams at home, is not mentioned or highlighted to anywhere near the degree the hockey teams with weak fan turnout are.
Quite often, the problem with struggling franchises is a lack of winning and being involved in postseason competition. The fans sense that their team has little chance to win most of the time. There are some exceptions to that rationale, like the Marlins, who play their home games at Sun Life Stadium, where the spring through summer heat and humidity is too uncomfortable for most Floridians during the baseball season, to sit outdoors. Certainly the team has had some exciting years,with two World Series championships ( 1997,2003) in their brief history, the only seasons in which they qualified for the playoffs, as the National League Wild Card, having entered MLB in 1993. The Rays empty seats at Tropicana Field are tough to figure out. The highly competitive Rays, AL Pennant winners in 2008, and Division title holders in 2010, have some of the most talented young ballplayers in the big leagues, starting with slugging third baseman Evan Longoria, and pitcher David Price. Unfortunately, the fans only seem to come out in large numbers, when the visitors are the ones who fill stadiums throughout the major leagues, like the Yankees and Red Sox. The Rays play their home games, in St.Petersburg, which is about a half-hour drive from Tampa, and perhaps the inconvenience of the travel is part of the reason for their poor overall attendance.
The NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers are struggling at the gate. If they continue to draw poorly, the franchise will find their new home in Winnipeg,where fans will pay somewhat higher prices than most teams, because the arena, the MTS Centre, has a smaller seating capacity, ( 15,015) so the ticket prices would have to be higher than teams with greater seating availability. Those who are familiar with Atlanta, have suggested that the city is composed of many individuals who have relocated from northern cities, and in terms of professional sports, they still tend to support the teams from the cities they originated from. Perhaps that is also a factor in the attendance problems the team has experienced. More than likely, it has everything to do with the fact that the Thrashers have only been in the playoffs once,and were quickly eliminated by the New York Rangers in four games. Nothing draws fans like winning, and conversely, consistent losing and the absence of postseason play, chases fans away from all but a few teams, like the Toronto Maple Leafs.
You can forget the nonsense that you sometimes hear, suggesting that the only NHL fans in the United States, are the ones at the stadiums. After the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last June,some reports indicated that as many as two million fans filled the downtown of the Windy City for their parade . The game has been growing in America for quite some time, as we’ve all seen in places like San Jose, with solid attendance since their first year in the league. This season in Tampa Bay, general manager Steve Yzerman has tweaked the club and added head coach Guy Boucher, with the results so far being very positive, and leading to sellouts at the St.Pete Times Forum. Maximum seating capacity at the Forum for hockey is 19,758. This club appears to have an opportunity to do something special in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The only thing that the NHL needs to improve on,is the same thing as every other league requires. That is continuing to grow the parity in the league, which in most cases, helps keep fans interested in the game, and feeling that their team has a chance to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Having 3-5 struggling franchises, doesn’t make the National Hockey League a bad league or business. The other professional leagues,with the exception of the NFL, have their own teams that are in trouble. Even the high profile English Premiership, home to some of the most popular sports franchises in the world, has teams that struggle to make ends meet financially. This kind of distress is not unique to the NHL, although some in the media make it seem otherwise. For some reason, only the NHL’s weakest links get all the negative attention. Only the journalists who focus on this would know why.