Neutral-Zone Crap: The NHL's attendance problem
Where are all the Canadian fans? Plus, Bouchard key to Edmonton's improved play, Mark Messier has a memoir out, and a story about a young man chasing his dreams
The two teams with the longest sellout streaks in the NHL managed to sell all the tickets to their home openers this season. But the Pittsburgh Penguins’ streak of 633 consecutive sellouts and the Chicago Blackhawks’ streak of 535, were both snapped in Game No. 2. As fans venture back to NHL arenas on a regular basis for the first time in 18 months, they’re staying away on both sides of the border.
It should come as no huge surprise that the NHL is seeing its attendance dip early in the season. After all, Major League Baseball was down 33 percent in 2021. But for a league that gleans about 50 percent of its revenues from ticket sales, empty seats hit the NHL’s bottom line harder than they do in the other three North American professional sports.
“The question is, what is this?” said an NHL team president. “Is this just a response to what has happened the past two years and people are slow coming out, or is this a behavior shift?”
And what exactly is happening in Canada? There was a time when every single ticket in every single Canadian rink was a sure-fire sale. But after four home games, even the mighty Toronto Maple Leafs are down 468 from capacity. After four games, the Montreal Canadiens are averaging 2,085 under capacity and the Edmonton Oilers, who have yet to lose a game, have averaged 2,394 unsold seats for their first three home games. Calgary drew 15,174 to its home opener, which was more than 4,000 below capacity and even Winnipeg has had trouble filling the smallest building in the league, down an average of 1,372 from capacity. The Ottawa Senators continue to struggle mightily, down an average of 7,697 under capacity after five games. The Vancouver Canucks sold out their home opener Tuesday night.
In fact, there have been a total of 62,736 seats that have gone unsold in Canadian cities in the first two weeks of the season. Let’s say the average ticket price for those seats is $75. That’s almost $5 million (Cdn.) in unrealized revenues in the first two weeks. “This isn’t unexpected,” the team president said. “My worst-case scenario models have us off by 12 to 15 percent on our revenues this season.”
In reality, the NHL is experiencing the same reckoning as a lot of other industries. The pandemic has been a drag on the economy and there are a good number of corporate boxes that are going empty this season, for a couple of reasons. The main one is that a lot of corporations still aren’t back to regular office hours and attendance and many have a no-entertainment policy. And if people aren’t at the office, they’re less inclined to go to the game straight from work. “A lot of the corporations aren’t bringing clients to games,” the team president said.
THE MESSIAH’S MEMOIR A COMPELLING READ
When Mark Messier spoke throughout his NHL career, people tended to listen if they knew what was good for them. So now that one of the greatest leaders in hockey history has a book out, it might be wise for all of us to take a look at it. Messier’s memoir, entitled No One Wins Alone, is now available in bookstores.
There are a couple of very interesting nuggets in the book. One of Messier’s wilder yarns came from an experience he had when he was 19 years old and took magic mushrooms for the first time on a trip to Barbados with his brother and some friends. He was so high he was no longer seeing geckos in his room. “I was seeing dragons, with horns and fangs,” he said. Later, when he was tossing a frisbee, “I truly believed it was an alien flying saucer.” He said using mushrooms helped him expand his mind and gain “a deep and lasting appreciation for the diversity of human beings.” He doesn’t say whether he continued to use them throughout his career.
One of the more interesting on-ice stories came out of the 1984 Canada Cup. That tournament came on the heels of the Oilers ending the New York Islanders dynasty. Glen Sather was named coach of the team and promptly chose eight of his players for the team, along with both his assistant coaches and a number of Oilers’ off-ice personnel. There were only four Islanders named to the team – Mike Bossy, John Tonelli, Bob Bourne and Brent Sutter.
Canada ended up winning that tournament, but things did not start well. The Canadians lost to both Sweden and the Soviets in the preliminary round, leaving them with a rather uninspiring 2-2-1 record and another matchup against the Soviets in the semifinal. After the 6-3 loss to the Soviets, Bossy said the result would have been different if Al Arbour had been coaching the team. Messier writes that the team had a meeting at its hotel the night before the semifinal and during that meeting, directly addressed the Islanders, saying, “I’m not going to sugar coat this. I don’t fucking like you guys, not one of you. But I’ve got to play for my country and we’ve got to win.”
The trainers then decided to seat the Oilers and Islanders next to each other in the dressing room and the team finally began to gel. With the score tied 2-2 in overtime against the Soviets, Paul Coffey broke up a 2-on-1, then moved the puck up the ice and into the Soviets zone. After Coffey ultimately got the puck back at the point from Sutter and his shot was deflected by Bossy past the puck past the Soviet goalie. “That was it,” Messier wrote. “We’d done it. Oiler, to Islander, to Oiler, to Islander, for the win.”
BOUCHARD A BOON TO OILERS BLUELINE
For the first time in NHL history, four teams have started the season with 5-0-0 records. The Carolina Hurricanes have outscored their opponents 22-8, the Florida Panthers have bettered their opponents by a 27-12 margin (going 6-0-0), the St. Louis Blues have outscored their opposition by a 25-11 margin and the Edmonton Oilers are 24-13 in goals for and against.
The Oilers will never be confused with a defensive juggernaut, but it’s undeniable that things have improved on the blueline. And much of that improvement has to do with the play of Evan Bouchard, who has earned his place on the top defensive pairing with Darnell Nurse. Oilers coach Dave Tippett acknowledged that Tyson Barrie’s rocky start has something to do with Bouchard being on the top unit, but the results have been encouraging. The Oilers are outscoring their opponents 4-1 and outshooting them 45-34 when Bouchard is on the ice. As a team, the Oilers have given up 42 high-danger scoring chances in five games.
Bouchard is playing more, playing in all situations and excelling. Prior to the season, Tippett predicted Bouchard would probably determine more than any other player how much better the Oilers would be this season. And the 22-year-old is making him look downright prophetic. “What I meant by that was we needed him to step up and take a bigger role,” Tippett said. “It’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing to do it. The X-Factor was whether he would be able to do it or not, and he’s moving in the right direction in a hurry, which is a good thing for us.”
ABOUT A BOY (AND A DAD AND A DREAM)
After racing to the airport for a morning flight to Chicago, then driving from O’Hare to Indianapolis, Paul Hunter nervously settled into his seat at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum Saturday night. He knew things were going well when he realized in the second period that he wasn’t nervous anymore.
Hunter has four kids’ worth of experience being a hockey dad and he’s been around the game at all levels for years. But even this was new to him. Even when you’ve covered the game for three decades, it is not every day you get to watch your son make his pro hockey debut, which 24-year-old Sam Hunter did for the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL Saturday, the night of his father’s 62nd birthday. And his son played so well in the first period that Paul was finally able to take a breath in the second.
Paul Hunter is my old running mate on the Toronto Maple Leafs beat at the Toronto Star. Until he and his wife, Mary Ormsby, retired from the Star newsroom during the pandemic, both were talented and key writers for Canada’s biggest newspaper. When they weren’t tracking down sports stories, they found time to have four children – three boys and a girl – all of whom were high-level minor hockey players. After playing three seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Sam went on to play at Queen’s University, but was sidelined in 2020-21 when the season was cancelled. But he kept working out and landed a tryout with the Cyclones, who are coached by Jason Payne, who coached him in minor hockey. Sam went to Cincinnati as a walk-on and made the team out of camp.
“He busted his ass all summer,” Paul said. “He worked really hard all summer with that goal in mind. He was so focused on making this team and he saw this as his chance. He really, really wanted to be ready.”
Dad is used to seeing his kids in high-level competition. His oldest son played at a college in New York on a lacrosse scholarship and his daughter is currently doing the same at San Diego State University. Mary Ormsby is in the Ohio State University Hall of Fame for volleyball. (Paul is, well, a great writer.) Nobody knows where this will end up, but the family has always been well grounded and realistic in its expectations. The fact that their son Sam has made it this far is already the realization of a dream. And it couldn’t have happened to a better family.
“It’s a thrill to watch someone whom you’ve watched play hockey since he was five years old and playing hockey and getting paid for it,” Paul said. “He really is chasing a dream. And you can only do it when you’re young. He was just beaming after the game, he was so happy. I said to him after the game, ‘No matter what happens the rest of your life, you can say you played pro hockey.’ ”
DRIBS AND DRABS
The Toronto Maple Leafs lead the league in both high-danger chances for (79) and against (78), according to the website www.naturalstattrick.com, but they’ve also played seven games. That’s a mind-boggling 11.1 against per game, yet it’s not even the worst in the league. That dubious distinction belongs to the Vegas Golden Knights, who have surrendered 69 in six games for an average of 11.5…In their, uh, defense, the Leafs are second in high-danger chances for per game at 11.3. The first-place team is probably going to surprise you, since it’s the New Jersey Devils, who have generated 60 high-danger chances in just five games for an average of 12 per game…Go to the front of the class and collect your gold star if you said anything close to this prior to the season: “Boy, It’s a good thing Bill Zito got Sam Bennett under contract on a four-year deal worth $17.7 million before the season.”…Still looking for his first goal of the season, Nick Suzuki acknowledged the poor start at both ends of the ice has taken a toll on him. “I’ve got to step it up,” he said prior to Tuesday night’s 5-1 loss to Seattle in which he had a season-high four shots, “and hopefully I can do it on this road trip.” One place to start would be to shoot more. Suzuki went into the Seattle game with just seven shots and coach Dominique Ducharme said that has been a problem for him. (Reminds me of Pat Quinn, who used to say, “Sometimes I think we’re trying to pass it into the net.”) “I can trust my shot, I know I can beat goalies,” Suzuki said. “Just got to simplify my game and get to the net and hopefully get one. I know I can be a lot better and contribute more.”