This is interesting to me, because I get the "southern market vs Canadian market" thing, but my initial thought was that the Coyotes and Panthers are probably the two smallest fan-bases on HF. The California teams all have the same number of fans as basically any team that isn't one of the absolute biggest markets. So do the Stars. The Lightning and Hurricanes may not be *quite* there, but they're definitely a sizable group. Same goes for Columbus, I guess. We all know that in the time since we thought they'd move, the Predators have definitely *made it* (they were always a better market than Canadians thought, imho, but now that they're perennial contenders, they've gone nuts), and even Vegas has a big group now, and probably a decent handful of people who had fun with their inaugural season and have them as a secondary team or a western time zone viewing option. St. Louis is uhh southern-ish? Missouri feels southern, but St. Louis feels midwestern? Someone can fill me in, but they don't feel the same just because they've had a team forever and are probably the best organization that's never felt particularly close to a Cup (aside from maybe for a bit in the early 2000s, who get slept on, and are probably more of a "**** happens" thing a la Capitals/Sharks than actually a step below the Avalanche/Red Wings/Stars).
It's just the Panthers and Coyotes who I still only see a fan or two per day and I'm like "oh, yeah, those guys have fans, people care about them," but I don't think that's market specific. I think we all should've learned from Nashville, Columbus, and Carolina, or even just remembering the low points in attendance/ownership for the Sabres, Penguins, and Senators, who are all in fine markets but went through 4-5 year periods where we joked about them not having fans (don't get mad at me Sabres/Pens fans, it was 15 years ago). We harp on poor attendance for southern markets but at this point, everyone does fine as long as they aren't terrible and boring. If the Coyotes or Panthers made the playoffs (I am pretty high on both teams, actually), we'd probably see a lot more activity from them. I don't care about "growing the game" but I do roll my eyes at Canadian elitism (before you yell at me, I'm a Leaf fan who has spent maybe ten nights of my life outside of Toronto, and eight of them were in Ottawa, the other two were in Brooklyn), and I'd be interested to see what happens when those fanbases start logging on again, for sure.
