It was a miracle we got a team in Ottawa at all. The odds were really stacked against us. In the middle of die-hard Habs-Leafs storied territory, an against-all-odds team with the worst expansion draft in history was given a team it couldn’t pay for, that played its first few years in the junior teams 10,000 seat arena while they scrambled to see if they could pull off a real estate deal to build an arena.
And they did, but still, losing to the leafs in the first round each year, the excuses from fans were numerous. When asked on message boards why fans weren’t going to games, the answers usually included that the team wouldn’t buy free agents needed, wouldn’t trade Alfie, Redden, Havlat for Nieuwy, McGillis, and Arnott. Parking lot protests were planned to send a message to management. Besides, the arena was too far away, couldn’t get there after work, the traffic was too annoying, ticket prices are way too high, how can an average family of four afford to go to the game, and that darn parking lot!
Every expansion thread in these message boards had Ottawa at the top of the list, weeks away from moving to Portland. Ottawa is just too small they said, they will never compete with Toronto, they don’t have the corporate market of big cities needed to survive they said. Sure the cheap seats sell but the lower bowl is empty where the corporate support is. They will be moved - it is certain.
Then we got some success and became an odds on team amongst bettors. And the fans got an excitement over the team because it was winning. Winning changes everything. No more complaints about the arena being too far away any more. You just don’t hear it. No complaints from the average family of four over ticket prices, in fact fans are hoping revenues will increase. No more Portland Senators threads at HF. No more empty lower bowls because there is a buzz over the teams success.
‘Canes got a good early run, but they weren’t ready. Now they have a true core in the making, some top prospects, a five year plan that looks very promising for growth. And as long as they are growing revenues at a steady prescribed rate, they will qualify for getting some of the players escrow money as revenue sharing.
Our old owner used to say he could break even at 13,000 attendance. Although of course later they said they were losing money with the arena sold out at twice as high ticket prices. (You have to have an ownerese filter to read these.) But fans act like Carolinas owners should be given total sell-outs at all times or they are a failure. What nonsense. They have to work for their money. And it is a long term plan. Not 1 year.
I’d hope Canes fans are setting the bar high for their team this year. Ignore the chatter - build a winner slowly. You have the foundation coming into place.