Quote:
|
Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58
And what if they don't win?
Everyone seems to think it's so easy in the NHL because 16 teams make the playoffs. IIRC, there hasn't been a back-to-back Cup winner in years. (I could be wrong, too lazy to look it up)
Attendance is suffering in many NHL cities....even the clubs who win. The tickets are just too expensive. I used to go to 20-25 Blues games a year. I just can't do it anymore. And STL has pretty reasonable tickets.
|
What you don't see is that the Chiefs give us some hope at the start of the season, and they sell the whole season out. When the Royals are playing good ball and you go there on Friday or Saturday night, there are a lot of people there.
If the historically pathetic and financially overmatched Royals, who really have no hope of winning a championship in the near future, have still been able to put 20 or 25k in the seats by stringing a few wins together, why can't an NHL team work here? The Royals haven't folded because people still remember the goodwill they built in the 70s and 80s. People remember what winning felt like and they want to keep the team around to feel that again.
I think that the city is dying for a winning sports team to be passionate about. I think that if you put an NHL team here like the Penguins it works. This isn't a lame expansion team with no-name players, or a pathetic team that has been losing forever and washed out of some other town where they couldn't give tickets away. It's a real franchise, with credibility from the ownership right down to a legitimate superstar.
People will show up for that.