Sorry New Jersey, Sabres fans dont’ have enough of a presence there to help fill your building.

Posted by TheTick from Buffalo on 11/04/08 at 06:21 AM ET

Two notoriously bad attending teams don’t exactly send up warning signals to me.  While New Jersey did poorly before in the Meadowlands, their new place not selling out is not all that shocking because it costs even more to watch boring hockey in an even less desirable location.

Posted by HockeyJoe from Upstate New York on 11/04/08 at 06:35 AM ET

New Jersey has been boring for so long, but last night’s game had a lot of flow and back-and-forth play. Mostly because the Devils never could establish in the offensive zone, of course. But the bottom line is that except for the fact that NJ didn’t play well enough to actually contest the game until the final 5 minutes, it was fairly exciting hockey to watch.

Posted by false_cause from DC on 11/04/08 at 08:13 AM ET

For a few years now, the definition of attendance has been misunderstood by the NHL.

To the NHL, attendance is the number of tickets sold whereas it actually means the number of persons (warm bodies) in the seats.

While the number of tickets sold may be good for the bottom line, it does not help grow the sport because no one is in the stands watching the game.

Posted by Ted from Innisfil, Ontario on 11/04/08 at 10:34 AM ET

Does hockey belong in the NY area?? Kidding of course. But if these were the Predators or Coyotes or Panthers numbers, there would be so much more of a deal made of this, would there not?

Posted by PredNeck from Hicktown on 11/04/08 at 11:04 AM ET

PredNeck - Mirtle’s been doing a nice job of keeping you southern no-shows in check.  No one has been making a big deal about it because, for some rotten reason, reporting what’s not going well in the NHL doesn’t seem to fly very well.  The NHL is pretty good at pretending there aren’t any problems.

Posted by HockeyJoe from Upstate New York on 11/04/08 at 12:17 PM ET

There was never any need for two additional teams in the NY area. The Islanders were put there just to keep the WHA out back in the 70’s. As for NJ…it doesn’t matter what kind of hockey they play. The people of NJ don’t care. Northern NJ are Rangers fans. South Jersey are Flyers fans.  Bck in the day NJ used to play NYR, NYI and Philly about 20 times per year. That would fill their building. However, Gary Bettman thinks people want to see Columbus and Nashville and Florida…......get used to alot of empty seats….As a Bruins fan I dread the fact that we have to play Columbus and Phoenix this year. You can’t sell a $100 ticket to see these teams

Posted by kevin from boston on 11/04/08 at 12:46 PM ET

The Bruins can’t sell tickets either and sellout games against Montreal generally prove to embarass the Bruins further by having Habs fans buy up the rest of the building and being louder than the B’s faithful.

Posted by HockeyJoe from Upstate New York on 11/04/08 at 12:54 PM ET

I brought this up about Jersey about a week ago and was attacked for it…

Posted by Kevin from Pittsburgh on 11/04/08 at 02:04 PM ET

Of course they’re not selling well.  In an interview last week, Brandon Dubinsky even came right out and said it, that the Rangers consider a game at the Coliseum to be another home game because it’s mostly Rangers fans at those games.

Posted by K24 from NYC on 11/04/08 at 07:59 PM ET