Glad to know I’m not crazy or imagining things.

This season: Atlanta, 14,181 in average attendance, 27th in the League
The pre-lockout year: Pittsburgh, 11.877 in average attendance, 30th in the League

Posted by SENShobo from Waterloo, ON on 12/21/08 at 11:12 AM ET

I know, those penguins are such bandwagon fans. Real fans should still go to games after their team sells off every remaining half decent player they have.
Real fans buy Dick Tarnstrom jerseys, since after all, the d-man led our team with ~50 points.

Real fans buy tickets to games, even while Pittsburgh is losing thousands of people every year because there are twice as many people as available jobs.

Why is that when Detroit doesn’t fill seats, its the economy, when pittsburgh doesn’t its bandwagon fans?

I don’t know a single person who is a fan of Penguins Hockey now that wasn’t a fan then. The only difference? Pittsburgh has jobs, Pittsburghers have money, and the Pens have a team worth spending it on.

Posted by Kevin from Pittsburgh on 12/21/08 at 12:12 PM ET

Kevin - If I read your comment correctly, it seems that you misunderstood my email. And yes, it was I who wrote that. The Atlanta market will support a winning team, but the Atlanta hockey market will support any team that isn’t headed by the current GM. Even I have reduced the number of games I attend, because I simply can’t afford to spend money to see a sub-par product.

It’s disappointing, for us here.

Yeah, Pittsburgh 2004 and Atlanta 2008 are two very different animals with two very different circumstances. But in their earlier blog post, Atlanta was painted as a bad market. Did you feel the same about Pittsburgh in 2004? When fans from other cities displayed pictures of Mellon being nearly empty, did they paint Pittsburgh as a bad market?

All I was trying to do was draw attention to the reason why Atlanta isn’t filling up Philips—even when a talent like Crosby comes to town.

Posted by Alan from Atlanta on 12/21/08 at 01:06 PM ET

No Alan, I understand what you were saying, my response was to SensHobo. I read EN every day and understood what was going on between you and Seth, and I agree with you that Atlanta can support a team. I just hate it when idiots like Senshobo come in with some completely unrelated BS just to take a senseless knock at a team they don’t like.

A lot of people take knocks at teams that don’t fill the arena, and I think its all crap. Can you really blame fans of a team that is awful for not going to games? When I make fun of a team like Atlanta for the arena being empty, I’m not saying anything to the fans, I’m speaking about how ridiculous the TEAM is. In other words, Don Wadell. I think Seth sees it the same way, but idiots like Senshobo come in here with some unrelated BS about attendance numbers off a pissed off fan base and say that no one except fans of teams who have sold out for the last 200000 seasons can talk about failing teams.

Posted by Kevin from Pittsburgh on 12/21/08 at 02:34 PM ET

Then I was incorrect—thanks for understanding!

It’ll get worse before it gets better. I’m just hoping the contributions of myself to other media outlets, as well as my fellow fans doing all they’re planning to do (or are already doing, locally), really begins to open the eyes of the ownership and convince them that firing Waddell is their best course of action. Many have spent their season ticket money for the year on new televisions and subscriptions to Center Ice. I bought Center Ice myself, and it’s paid off big for me, since I can also watch my hometown Red Wings play as well.

Fun stuff.

Best of luck to Pittsburgh. Maybe SensHobo is just mad at how the Thrashers beat them a few nights ago? I’ll speculate no further. Just know there are a ton of fans here ready to embrace a new GM willing to rebuild the team the right way.

Posted by Alan from Atlanta on 12/21/08 at 03:11 PM ET

I think that the goals and attitude of the Atlanta management have been the problem.  I’m not a Thrashers fan and don’t follow the team very much, but I’m a Sharks fan who lived through the expansion years at the Cow Palace and some of the lean years in the mid-late 90’s before Darryl Sutter came to town.  I understand that the Thrashers have felt, since their inception, that it is imperative for them to make the playoffs early to help build the fan base (certainly that helped cement the Sharks place in the local sports landscape when they made it in 94).  As the great Yogi Berra once said though, it’s getting late early down in Atlanta, and here’s the rub about making the playoffs: you have to do more than just make it and get swept if you want to build that bond between fan and team.  What helped the Sharks in 94 wasn’t simply that they made it, but that David defeated Goliath from Detroit (and pushed Toronto to OT in game 7 of the second round).  If you can’t put together a team that can consistently win, the next best thing you can do is put together a team that is young and talented and fun to watch, 3 things the Thrashers have never been.  Let your fans grow attached to some of your younger players, and become invested in their development as they mature into bonafide NHL players.  Because of their own desire to make the playoffs they’ve been too willing to give up on solid younger players in an effort to get them “over the hump.”  That Coburn trade is probably the best example of the impact of that mindset, but the return on Hossa is also a good example.  Waddell tried to get 2 NHL players (Armstrong and Christensen) along with a prospect because he still had hopes of competing.  If he had been willing to throw in the white flag and focus on getting prospects and picks for Hossa the team would ultimately have been better off.  Sometimes losing is the best way to start winning because it allows you to start stockpiling premier talent.  The two worst things you can be in sports are mediocre and boring, and for most of their existence Atlanta has been both.  Having said all that, if you don’t have a very solid development system in place that can turn talent into production, all the picks and prospects in the world won’t save you. 

As for the attendance problems in Detroit that have been mentioned, I too am getting a little tired of those fans being let off the hook simply because the auto industry and the Michigan economy have been in the tank lately.  Well, anyone who is honest has to admit that’s been the case for at least 20 years and despite that, the Wings have at different times been able to sell out the Joe every night.  For whatever reason the support for the Wings hasn’t been anything close to what it was 10-15 years ago.  My gut tells me that they suffer from some Atlanta Braves-itis, where winning just isn’t new or interesting anymore.  I would think the NHL, which as a league depends on ticket revenue far more than any of the other pro sports, has to be very concerned that the defending champs, a team with a lengthy history, can’t sell out their building consistently (but then again the things Gary Bettman chooses to care about or not care about never cease to amaze me).  Which leads me to this sobering, sad thought: if the Michigan economy is really to blame, and it doesn’t get better soon, how long can the Red Wings stay in Detroit?  In the midst of all this bailout talk I think we’re all assuming that someday the American auto makers will bounce back, but what if they don’t?  What if Detroit as a city never really recovers, or has to hit rock bottom (big three bankruptcy) before any new industry moves in?  And what if it takes another 20-30 years for that new industry to be born?  Can the NHL and the Red Wings afford to wait it out if things get considerably worse?

Posted by Aaron from Boston on 12/21/08 at 06:12 PM ET