Thanks to Jayson for hooking me up with a few of the 30AC figures I was seeking.  Just need 3 more to finish off the wave!   

I think that's more Marvel trickery.  Lately, they seem to be taking an upcoming summer comic cover and doctoring it up for "fun".

Newsarama showed off a Cap teaser image last week too...

New Captain America?


Based off this Real Marvel Cover:


I don't think they'd give it away so soon, I think the "Cap is Dead"  story will play out a bit longer before someone else replaces him...

Bear in mind the Pen's attendance # there is partially because our building is incredibly small too...  Their 16,000 number is a little deceiving because of how small the building is compared to most other NHL arenas anymore.

Yeah, that's why I tried to get those "capacity" numbers in there for comparison... but I guess I left out the middle ten teams.   

• San Jose   99.5%
• Philadelphia   99.0%
• Edmonton   98.5%
• Colorado   97.9%
• Dallas      96.3%
• Pittsburgh   96.0%
• Anaheim   94.5%
• Carolina   91.7%
• Los Angeles   90.7%
• Columbus   90.6%

You can see there that The Pens fill 96% of the arena on average.  That to me says more about attendance than just the total numbers - you can only draw so much based on the seats you have.

With respect to Jeff's attendance numbers (well, the NHL's numbers), I'd love to see those broken down to paying attendance versus giveaways/discounts/promotions (buy one get one free). 

Unfortunately, the NHL doesn't care if bodies are in the seats, only that someone paid for them.   

And, remember those are just the average numbers.  I'm sure Nashville has it's share of split games - 17000 (sell-out) for games against Detroit, 11000 (6k empty seats) for a few of those Tuesday night games.

I agree that the numbers seem fishy, but the way teams count attendance is fishy anyway.

Just some food for discussion on Jesse's Pens and Nashville and other "Hockey Hotbeds"...


First up, average NHL attendance per home game this year (06-07)

  1  Montreal   21273
  2  Detroit   20066
  3  Tampa Bay   19786
  4  Toronto   19467
  5  Philadelphia   19304
  6  Ottawa   19294
  7  Calgary   19289
  8  Buffalo   18690
  9  Vancouver   18630
10  Minnesota   18442
11  NY Rangers   18200
12  Dallas   17847
13  Colorado   17630
14  San Jose   17404
15  Carolina   17176
16  Edmonton   16839
17  Los Angeles   16774
18  Columbus   16433
19  Pittsburgh   16278
20  Anaheim   16210
21  Atlanta   15980
22  Florida   15242
23  Nashville   14999
24  Phoenix   14724
25  Boston   14422
26  New Jersey   13978
27  Washington   13547
28  Chicago   12771
29  NY Islanders   12532
30  St. Louis   12177

No surprise that the SE USA and the bad teams dominate the bottom half of the list....   But look at TB up at #3 in average attendance.  Proof I guess that if your team is good, people will come watch even in the south. 


Next, these are the ten teams that have "sold-out" every home game this year... in fact, the top six teams listed are actually over 100% of their seating capacity thanks to standing room and additional suite tickets)

• Calgary      112.4%
• Ottawa      104.3%
• Toronto      103.5%
• Minnesota   102.1%
• Vancouver   101.1%
• Tampa Bay   100.1%
• Montreal     100.0%
• Detroit       100.0%
• Buffalo       100.0%
• NY Rangers   100.0%

Gee, look at that.  5 of the 6 Canadian teams, 4 Northern US Teams, and kudos to TB (I guess having a really good team really makes a difference  ).


And these are the bottom ten who can't even fill their buildings (>90% of capacity).

• Nashville     87.7%
• Atlanta       86.2%
• Phoenix      84.1%
• Florida        79.2%
• Boston        77.4%
• NY Islanders   76.9%
• New Jersey   73.4%
• Washington   72.6%
• Chicago       62.3%
• St. Louis      58.0%

Man, I had to double check, but yeah - things are so bad in STL that nearly half the building has been empty the whole year.   

Also kind of surprised to see Chicago, NJ and Boston on there, but I guess that's more "no one wants to see a sucky team" related than anything else.



And, one last interesting note [insert knife]...

Using the median NHL attendance figure of buildings running at approximately 95% capacity, a certain 16,000 seat MTS Centre in a certain Canadian prairie town would average 15200 tickets putting it around 22-23 on the list.  [twist].   

I would agree with the others who have said that the rest of the stuff is probably delayed now too... it makes no sense to have a huge marketing push this Fall to support something that won't be out for 3-6 months.   

I just wonder how many folks at LucasArts are going to get canned over this one...

LFL was planning out a whole multi-media blitz around the video game, hyping the game and the marketing blitz (books, comics, toys) at SW.com and in the media and then the game is late?  Ooops!   

Marvel

Civil War of course is the big deal right now, and although the delays have been annoying, I have enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it wraps up at this point.  There are a number of rumors, many of which I hope don't pan out.

Brian, now that it's over, what did you think of Civil War?  I was tempted to pick it up, but never did...


Oh and...



HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!

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SERIOUSLY!  HUGE CAPTAIN AMERICA SPOILERS!

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DO NOT CLICK THESE LINKS unless you want CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 spoiled!

SPOILERS - Shocking Event in Captain America #25

http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/CapAmerica/DDream/Cap_pages-2.jpg

Goodbye, Steve Rogers.   

I'm definitely going to have to grab this one today at the local shop...

We have received about 80% of our order on wave 1, and Hasbro has given us the green light to ship (this wave was originally scheduled to have a 3/24 shelf date). So, we will ship all preorders at least 1 case, and allocate multi case orders at this point."

Weird.  I've heard/read that Hasbro has a 3/24 street date assigned to the SpiderMan 3 toys, but that's the first I've read/heard about it being applied to the Star Wars 30AC stuff...