No longer Hockeytown?
Last week, Chris @ Taking One for the Team wrote a post about the other cities deserving of the Hockeytown, USA.
Enough is enough, it is time to strip Detroit of its (undeserved?) Hockeytown title. I never liked the whole Hockeytown thing to begin with, especially since the Red Wings bestowed the title on themselves. Shouldn’t something like that be voted on? Well that’s just what we’re going to do! We’re going to choose a new Hockeytown right here and now.
Chris’ nominees are: Buffalo, Chicago, San Jose, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Dallas.
Out of those options, I would pick Buffalo because of how crazy the fans seemed during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Minnesota is definitely a hockey crazy state, but I haven’t seen from the Wild fans that St. Paul should be named Hockeytown, USA.
Ross McKeon of Yahoo! Sports declared St. Paul, Minnesota the new Hockeytown.
Since opening the doors of the well-appointed Xcel Energy Center (more on that later) in downtown Saint Paul on Sept. 29, 2000, the Wild have attracted 282 consecutive sellouts – that’s every exhibition (21), regular-season (251) and playoff (10) match.
Every single game, through Tuesday night, has sold out for all of their six-plus seasons. Amazing.
Total attendance during that span is 5,214,206 for an average of 18,490 per game in a building that lists capacity at 18,064. The Wild have announced the attendance for their first six regular-season dates this year at 18,568 each.
So apparently, Detroit has been dethroned by the media. According to Yahoo! Sports NHL front page, the poll results do not agree. The poll asked, “The best U.S. hockey town is…” With over 36,000 votes, Detroit has 46% of the votes. Saint Paul is currently in second with 20% followed by Buffalo (19%) and Philadelphia (15%).
Lets Go Wings forum member, Barrie, reminds us that until the Tigers’ recent success in 2006, Detroit has been Hockeytown.
However, looking at the other American Hockey markets in recent years, Hockey was actually the top sport in Detroit. In all other American markets, even if the Hockey team sells out, Hockey is still 3rd or 4th in popularity. The Wings from 1995-2006 (before the Tigers turned it around), were the top sport in the city.
In Minnesota the Vikings and Twins are more popular than the Wild. In Buffalo, the Bills are more popular than the Sabres. The Wings were top dog, hense the name Hockeytown.
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2 Responses to “No longer Hockeytown?”
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November 7th, 2007 at 10:38 am
To add to this: I think this is another symptom of the Wings poor marketing skills. John Hahn and the kids at West Civic Center Drive simply have no finger on the pulse of this town anymore, and still think people are driven by a 13-year-old slogan that is as accurate as Ronnie Milsap on the firing range. This town never really supported the Vipers, nor the Whalers (All that was was great minor league hockey at reasonable prices in a small barn). Even the Michigan hockey team can’t count on selling out Yost anymore: they’re even hawking mini-ticket plans to students (and I can clearly remember when student section tickets were blisteringly hot).
There’s a laundry list of what I’d do if I had control of the franchise (none of which has to do with the team itself), but the very first thing would be to immediately drop that tag line, which does nothing but remind this town what an operational joke this franchise is.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I did notice that UM hasn’t sold out Yost and I thought that was a really surprising development considering a season ticket package isn’t that expensive (compared to the next step up, the Red Wings).
There are a lot of things that could be changed to improve the team, but that can be said about a lot of things. I simply think they need to reduce ticket prices (primarily the $44 and $54 seats) and make the team more accessible to the average fan to help generate more buzz about the team. I mean, the team has won the last 9 straight games and we haven’t heard much about the team’s success outside the few hockey articles in the sports section.