IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME!!!

The Joe is the biggest piece of crap ever.  I went to Mellon in pittsburgh, which is the oldest building and its 100X better than the Joe.  Any seat above the lower bowl is crap, the sound system is horrible, the people selling peanuts and $8.50 warm 22’s of miller lite are constantly in your way.  The building itself is in an area that makes me wet myself everytime i think about it.  Parking is an expensive nightmare.

Detroit needs a new facility that is not in the ghetto.  I love my wings, but going to the games costs tons of money, esp after you figure in parking, beers, snacks and seats.

Posted by DrW from Detroit on 10/04/07 at 03:01 PM ET

The lack of a sellout crowd at the Joe isn’t because the arena is a “piece of crap”. Nor is it because the Wings aren’t doing enough for the fans. It’s because the fans have become spoiled. The Wings have made the playoffs close to 20 straight seasons and have won three cups in the past 11 years. Winning has become so common for the Wings that there is nothing left to excite the fans enough to pack the arena. They know what to expect and that gets boring. And even when the games have been sold out over the past few seasons the noise/energy level at the arena has been extremely low. Especially when you compare it to other NHL arena’s. Wings fans are so spoiled that I don’t even think a game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals would sell out. If it did it would be because the other teams fans bought up the tickets.

Nothing gets fans excited more than jumping on the band wagon when the team is suddenly winning after years of losing. People love rooting for the underdogs. Just look at what happened with the Tigers last year, and what happened with the Wings when they suddenly went from the losing “Dead Things” team to a team that could actually win. Having so many other professional sports teams in the same city doesn’t help either.

Posted by John from Michigan on 10/04/07 at 04:31 PM ET

Today marked the first time that I’ve been able to publicly go after the Wings’ management on MLive, and

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 10/04/07 at 04:44 PM ET

Today marked the first time that I’ve been able to publicly go after the Wings’ management on MLive, and I’m not about to stop any time soon.

People don’t seem to understand that this has been going on for YEARS.  The Wings’ organizational arrogance has proliferated since the 01-02 Cup year, and the assumption that fans would simply gratefully show up—especially after the Wings’ salaries were halved during the lockout—was insulting to many fans.  The fact that Shanahan and Yzerman moved on didn’t help, nor did the fact that the Wings priced out the “middle class” with $44-55 tickets in the upper bowl instead of $30-40 tickets, but…

The worst offender is the organization’s attitude towards its fans.  Again, it’s an assumption that fans should simply be grateful for the on-ice product and the media coverage that the team allows to be released to the public as it’s highly censored, the belief that we’re walking dollar signs who should be cordoned off from the team and resented while we’re on the premises. 

Why do the Red Wings discourage fans from crowding near the tunnel when the team leaves the ice, to the point that guards threaten to kick ten-year-old children out of the game?  Why do the Red Wings refuse to make their players available to the public to actually “press flesh” and meet save training camp, the annual softball game, and a few $250+-per-plate charity events?  Why do the Wings keep their game presentation so stale, and why the hell do they run one of the NHL’s worst websites—the crap pay site called “RedWingsWorld” included?

Meet-and-greets.  Open practices.  A loosening of the reins on the media and player marketing to render players as more than two-dimensional objects.  A sense of excitement during games—including not only in-game content on that LCD screen of yours, but more and more meaningful access for Fox Sports Detroit—and real, FREE web content.  A real sense of accessibility, accountability to the fans, and actually working for the fan’s buck...

And yes, access to and at least acknowledgement thereof of the bloggers the team simply “doesn’t deal with,” because professionals with integrity and class like Paul Kukla are the anti-Eklunds of the world, and the lesser lights like myself subscribe to the example Paul sets for us…

Get your heads out of your butts, Wings, loosen that tie and the noose you place upon yoru players, and know that Paul and I have been banging the drum and vocalizing our discontent, adding constructive criticism to the organization—“cheap and easy” ways to improve your public image—and expressing discontent about the attitude of a team that we honestly and truly want to dominate this town and make loads of money from a happy fan base while holding your organization accountable for its actions for the past year and change, only to be ignored completely until those seas of empty seats—which existed throughout the 06-07 season—were finally acknowledged by the national media.

We were right all along, and now you’re learning the hard way that we were right—and we’re not going to stop riding your asses until you make meaningful change—and keep it up.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 10/04/07 at 04:58 PM ET

An anecdote that’s earned a mention—Paul did a tremendous job of securing me an invite to a charity dinner on the Joe’s ice to benefit Jack’s Place for Autism, Bernie Smilovitz’s charity, last November.  None of the local news agencies were covering the event, so the event’s organizers told us that they were thrilled to be receiving some free, positive publicity, and that, they were going to get.  Thrilled, honestly thrilled.

When I showed up, I was told that there was no reservation in my name.  I went to the event coordinator, and she had no record of me, nor Paul speaking with her…and, as it turned out, Olympia Entertainment, the Wings’ parent company, was running the event, so, of course, the invitation extended to a “blogger” for a *charitable event* just happened to disappear...

I was eventually referred to the Joe’s director of operations, Jim Bullo, and I repeated my situation politely and pleasantly while Mr. Bullo checked with building security on his earpiece and intonated, ever so gently, that security would be called if I did not excuse myself from the building.  Before he got to saying that out loud, I simply apologized for troubling him, thanked him for his time, and bade him a good evening. 

I left the Olympia Club stunned that Bullo and the operations staff would attempt to intimate that I was making my story up, but what could I do?  I’m a blogger, even when I represent an NHL-accredited site.  I don’t exist in their eyes. 

That’s how the Wings treat the media—we all know that the News, Free Press, MLive, and the Macomb Daily’s coverage is heavily censured, as indicated by the “It’s your turn to write this week’s Pavel Datsyuk” stories, Fox Sports Detroit gets all of 2 hours of total footage to air and re-air over and over again on Red Wings weekly and during pre and post-game shows, and this “Fire on Ice” campaign contains no players whatsoever—just an annoying voice going “tick, tock, tick, tock” as highlights are interspersed into a non-subliminal suggestion that tickets are hard to come by, and that the time in which to purchase them is running out.

That’s just a small example of the Wings’ bad behaviour.

I can tell you about the fact that I’ve seen a man sitting in the lower bowl threatened with expulsion because he was sitting near the Wings’ bench, and he accidentally placed his foot on the step adjacent to the Wings’ bench during play, and you should be made aware of the fact that the Wings are groomed to avoid autograph-seekers at all costs from their rookie seasons on—sometimes it’s really not personal when they say, “Sorry, I can’t sign,” and it’s not just the “Ebayer” effect.

That’s three stories out of at least fifty, and three instances in which the Wings’ organization has become accustomed to dismissing and even resenting the people who want to give the organization goodwill and simply express affection toward their favourite players—even if it’s with a smile, a nod, or a handshake instead of an autograph.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 10/04/07 at 05:34 PM ET

If I were to incarnate myself as a dedicated Wings blogger, I would be George.

Good stuff brother….just hope they listen, to all of us.

Posted by srt on 10/04/07 at 08:37 PM ET

Nice multi-part rant, George.

Too bad for the Red Wings that the alienated chickens have come home to roost.  Guess we’ll see if they adapt or die.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/04/07 at 08:39 PM ET

If nothing else, they have to listen to the less-full coffers.  Empty cash registers are pretty loud to businesses.

(My code word is “costs22.”  I think their indifference to the fans will cost them more than that.)

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/04/07 at 08:42 PM ET

I do have to add a bit on the winning = spoiled concept…

I like that, personally.  For me, the fact that you’re pretty likely to see a Wings win at the Joe is a big, big selling point, and the concept that a third straight 50-win season and a minimum of 2-3 rounds of playoff action are simply expected is awesome.  I don’t know about the average sports fan, but as somebody who was raised in the Dead Wings era and was lucky enough to blossom into a fan just as the Wings pointed the ship in the playoff direction in the early 90’s, I think we’re spoiled rotten, and I adore absolutely every millisecond of it. 

It’s not like a hundred thousand people show up at Michigan Stadium every year because the team stinks most years, you know?  To me, a spoiled fan base is a fan base that embraces a successful team, one that proudly puffs out its chests when wearing something with a Red Wings logo on it. 

I think that if the Wings put the PR gusto into marketing their “brand,” winning wouldn’t get old—the Wings’ front office’s claims that the league wants to see the Wings fail, but we succeed anyway, bending the definition of an “old” hockey player included, would fuel a concept of Detroit as this sort of uber-underdog team, and I’d sure as heck portray Babcock’s style of play and the fact that so many of the Wings’ Swedes have true grit, Zetterberg included, as an Ikea with Bite.

There’s this genius t-shirt on a website called “Glarkware,” and I’d be marketing it like hotcakes with a little Wings logo added on:

I mean, what’s a better slogan than, “The Swedish Seven: We kick your arse on ice—politely,” “Tomas Holmstrom: Swedish Screen-ball?” or “Detroit’s Swedish Mafia: They built Ikea in Canton for a reason, fool!”

The Wings could do all sorts of creative things that would not only market the team and its players well, but also play on the fact that they do win so often, play on the stereotypes about being an older and “Euro-laden” team, and they could keep the giggles and pride coming…they just have to work at it.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 10/05/07 at 12:53 AM ET

That shirt is bloody awesome. 

Hmmmm…I’ll have to ask my coworker if his silk-screening equipment is still in mothballs.  I may have a request for him.

Winning certainly doesn’t get old for the Yankees (although their pitchers do—hah!) so I guess the key for the Wings is to be more like the Yankees and less like the Braves.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/05/07 at 11:24 AM ET