futurcorerock said:
Dear god, there'd be a stampede in Montreal and Toronto.
Meanwhile, Carolina would casually seat the first 16,000 who walked by the door and stopped to see what was going on inside
I would suggest free tickets to anyone who has season tickets or multi game ticket packages and award the same amount of seats. Then give away remaining tickets through promotions up until the season starts.
Free pre-season and practices as someone above said would also be a great idea.
Each team should create a Fan Day. Once a year before the season starts, they have a big FREE event where all the players come out for 8 hours to meet greet talk to and sign for the fans. Live bands, food, pony rides, the works. Baseball teams do it. This is the type of stuff the NHL needs to be doing. They need to be marketing themselves.
One alternative would be to give fans 50% off tickets, free parking and half priced concessions for first ten games.
These are all very small prices to pay for rewarding fans loyalty for the loss of an entire ****ing season.