AdmiralsFan24
Registered User
Its not just those small towns... Many historical teams are having extreme attendance issues and losing a ton of money. Ive been to alot of games in Western Canada and into the US and its painful how many empty seats there are with Vancouver Giants, Kamloops Blazers, Prince George Cougars and teams in USA. Bigger cities with maybe 2000 to 3000 fans only and dropping yearly. I went to a Kamloops game last season and it was less than half full and you could hear a pin drop almost all game and fans heads were burried in the cell phones... And this was against their biggest rival Kelowna Rockets... A team loaded with alot of talent. Also went to a Kelowna game this season and the attendance was really low
And Kamloops/Kelowna are very good franchises that have made many many NHLers
But Prince George and Kamloops aren't big cities. Neither even has 100,000 people and neither are dense cities, both with less than 1,000 people per square mile. Vancouver I couldn't tell you about (maybe with the Canucks and being a major city people don't want to bother with junior hockey?) but maybe what they need to do is make a fourth league so the travel is easier and isn't as expensive. Keep the Western Hockey League for BC and Washington/Oregon (and maybe Alberta?) and create the Prairie Hockey League for Manitoba, Saskatchewan and maybe Alberta. That would help keep travel costs down and potentially create more rivalries by teams playing each other more.