No, it's not like the Atlanta situation because the primary cause of the former owner's financial issues/forced sale/inability to put more than the minimum investment into the product came only from off-ice business issues. Without Hicks' house of cards going down, one can assume he would have invested slightly more in all areas of the business, from the on-ice product to the marketing and sales staff (which has been decimated the past few years - there's little or no marketing to speak of), which in turn would have lessened the attendance issues.
Honestly, the closest parallel is Phoenix before Balsillie sent everything to hell. The original owner (Moyes? My brain is hurt) lost all his money when his non-hockey business collapsed, which led to his torpedoing of the franchise itself when he had no liquid income. Now, that obviously takes a hard right from the Stars scenario at one point because the team was forced into an (against the NHL bylaws) bankruptcy whereas the Stars voluntarily entered once they were taken over by the lenders to clear old debts.
Honestly, the closest parallel is the Texas Rangers, who had attendance issues throughout the 2009 and 2010 seasons until the purchase to the Ryan/Greenberg group was finalized. Then once it became clear they were playoff bound in 10, ticket sales picked up and were great this year.
ETA: As far as the attendance issues in and of themselves, I ranted about this on the Stars board once and can link you to the down-and-dirty reasons the attendance sucks so far this year if you want. Long story short - lack of marketing staff and Hicks' business decisions torpedoed relationships with corporations who buy the expensive seats, interim president decided to eliminated super-cheap single-game and mini-plan deals because he feels like they alienate full STHs, poor on-ice product that gives little appeal to casual dollar in a "winner's town" and a slumping national economy are the major factors.
There are obviously things to fix, but this is a team that had a 2,000 person STH waiting list a decade ago - if they fix the problems that cropped up over the past 3-4 years, they'll be fine.
Is this due to the uncertainty over the Dallas situation? Maybe it's one reason there are no other bidders. BTW, the St Louis Blues, also up for sale and with a team in the World series, are averaging 19,150 i.e. 100% of seats sold
