As someone who works at the Arena, I can tell you that the issue with poor atmosphere is not new. The only way that it's going to improve is for the management to do a complete 180 turn on their policies, and frankly there are just too many factors involved I think to really make it that much better.
First, lets face it, reducing ticket/beer prices is NOT going to happen. A huge amount of revenue comes in from both Ticket Prices and beer. To reduce the ticket prices enough so that 'average joe' can go see the game, you'd need to drop the average ticket prices by AT LEAST $20 per ticket (Minimum). Multiply $20 by 18,910 and again by $41... equals $15.5 million. Simply not going to happen. That's money taken directly from the Canucks pockets. This doesn't even include beer prices.
Second, beer prices doesn't have much impact on how drunk our crowd gets. The beer lineups are constant and to keep up with demand we've even set up portable beer sellers with cans in barrels. The main limiting factor is our license. We can only serve people a set amount at a time, that's why you can only order two small cups of beer at a time. This is all we are allowed to do based on our liquor license. We also have several liquor license employees patrolling the building every event to make sure we're enforcing their policies. We can't even allow people to 'watch' more than 2 beers at a time. This means if you watch your friends 2 beer while they go to the washroom leaving you with 4... we have to pour 2 beer out if we see this. Rediculous? Yes, but if we lose our license, you get no beer and the Canucks don't make their money off that.
The only things that I can see that could help improve the atmosphere in Rogers arena is to do a complete 180 on their views on what is appropriate and not appropriate fan cheering. I'm not talking about swearing, etc... that's a non-starter. I'm talking about simply allowing people... no, encouraging people to be loud at ALL times. As it stands right now, if you're being loud (Not swearing, just constantly cheering, etc), people are told to warn the individual as it's annoying people who are just wanting to watch the game.
The trick is to try to take what we have now and turn it into what the Seahawks have in Seattle. A very loud base of fans where ALL fans feel like they're part of the event and actually matter. NOBODY in Seattle is complaining about noise. Nobody is going to Ushers in Seattle to complain about fans being too loud.
Many years ago the Canucks tried to make the fans feel like it was their right to be involved with the '7th man', but were laughed at, even by those on these forums, and quickly got rid of the promotion. So where do the Canucks go from here? After trying to encourage the fans to be louder... the fans turned around and scoffed at the idea and yet now people complain that nothing is being done.
DJ Dan, I agree... the music selection is terrible. However, I might add that this might not be his fault and instead be the demands from above on what type of music he should play. I'm sure he knows that Metallica Enter Sandman pumps up the crowd more than the Odds...
Again, I would love for nothing else than to see what was going on last night at EVERY game. I would love to hear from opposing players that Vancouver is by far the loudest building and toughest building to play in. But how to get there while keeping in mind that there are families there, fans from all age groups etc. You can't cater to JUST the loud people. The trick is to get the people who are just sitting there to really get more involved and want to get up and join in.
*EDIT* I'd also like to add that I think the only way to change the policies is to do it during the offseason with a massive campaign. Promote the hell out of it on Radio/TV ads basically outright stating "We want you up on your feet for 2.5 hours". From the moment the team takes warmup until the end of the three stars selection. ENCOURAGE people to get up, bang on the glass, shout out chants, etc.... People should NOT be sitting at the game. And if someone complains that someone is standing and they can't see.... tell employees to tell that person to get up. It's not going to fix itself with DJ Dan running the "Get on your feet" MP3. A completely different mindset needs to be brought in for fans.
