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].