L'Avy why do you always have to pop in and vomit all over the thread. from what I can read people are actually having a discussion for once, no one needed you to do a flyby.
I think we stopped giving away all of the freebies and that coincided with the obvious attendance drop. Phoenix could play a part as well now, but it's easy to have endless sellouts when a few thousand tickets are given away for every game.
The cheapest tickets in the arena, in the cheapest arena in Canada were not selling out. That's just a fact, it's about fining out why this market can't/won't sell out at better prices than other teams. Add to the fact that when we were better we still didn't sell out and all of a sudden it's a problem, especially when fans are at the same time clamouring for the owner to spend more money.
It Ottawa a bad hockey market? No, there are far worse markets down south, but it's no showing well against the other Canadian markets at the moment, and there is definitely a reason for it. What is the reason? Melnyk? Parking? Location? Fan apathy? Price? I mean we've made the playoffs more consistently than any of the other Canadian teams, and yet their fans seem to still be able to sell out despite years and years away from the dance. Why is that?
The point of identifying the problem is to find a solution. It's not good enough to say the team sucks, because fans have to go through down times and we still haven't missed the playoffs two years in a row, while having two of the leagues most epic runs in the last couple of years. If fans aren't willing to pay to watch this Sens team, then there are serious problems because it can get a lot worse than this.
