Sorry for the lack of recent posts. Sadly, I still have to go to school, and have been quite busy lately.
After watching the Canadiens’ 3-1 win over the Thrashers last night in Atlanta, I have only one question: Why does Atlanta even have a hockey team?
The Habs are always a huge draw, even on the road. There are Canadiens’ fans everywhere, and teams usually get bigger crowds when they are in town. I haven’t checked the “official” attendance numbers (which is usually fabricated by the home team anyways) for last night’s game, but even on TV; it was easy to see that attendance was low. There were tons of empty seats in the first 20 or so rows, and I swear, there was almost a full section that was completely empty.
It’s nearly impossible to get seats like these in a place like Montreal, but in Atlanta they couldn’t even sell them. To put it simply, people in Atlanta don’t care about hockey. As Canadiens’ colour commentator Benoit Brunet said (I’m paraphrasing and translating here), “they have a baseball team, a football team and a basketball team. In Atlanta, hockey is fifth out of four in terms of sports”.
The lack of attendance doesn’t just hurt the owner’s pockets, but it hurts the players’ morale too. There’s no electricity in an empty arena, and it’s hard for players to get pumped up to play an NHL game when they’re playing in front of 6000 people who are only at the game because they have nothing better to do.
Now compare this to a place like Quebec City, Winnipeg or even Hamilton. The people who live in these cities love hockey as much as they love their Tim Hortons. These cities would be thankful just to have a team, and I guarantee you they would never have empty seats in the lower bowl.
For some reason however, Commissioner Gary Bettman seems intent on growing the NHL brand in the Sun Belt. From the sparse (to put it nicely) crowds in places like Atlanta, Phoenix and Florida, you would think that Mr. Bettman would have learned that this is a fruitless pursuit. Hockey will never be popular in the Southern United States; it has too much ground to gain on the other sports.
Hockey has no history in the South, especially compared to football and baseball. If the Thrashers, and other teams with similar problems (Hello, Phoenix Coyotes) were to move to Canada, all these problems would be solved immediately. Some people point to the size of the cities in question, but in reality, it is not about how many people live in the city, but about how many of those people actually care about hockey.
Even if there are 1.5 million people living in the Phoenix area, that doesn’t mean that there are more Coyotes fans and ticket buyers then there would be in Hamilton (pop. 740 000) or Winnipeg (675 000).
Not only would there be more fans in these smallish Canadian cities, but the quality of the fans would be higher as well. Instead of having a few thousand “fans” who still think icing is what you put on cake, the relocation of Sun Belt teams would bring about packed arenas, full of knowledgable, diehard hockey fans. Instead however, real hockey fans are left out in the cold, and the NHL is stuck bargaining and begging people in the South to support their teams.
So please, Commissioner Bettman, give the real fans their teams, and leave the beach bums alone. People in Canada will be forever grateful, and as for the South, well, they probably won’t even notice.
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