US Div Seasons on the Rise

The US division of WHL has quite a following and I have proof.  I was going over the attendance averages for the past season and the average attendance seems to be another good season for the teams south of the border.  The chart below has the seasons average for the past 5 years.

                           2008          2009          2010          2011          2012

Everett               6425          6030           5701         5807           5278
Spokane             6557          6656           6453         6439           6643
Seattle                4082          4181           3853         4096           4206
Tri City              4245          4424           4480         4702           4653
Portland             4460          3648           4437         5594           6075

The most interesting part of the data is that the worst attendance season for the division was 2010 with an overall average for all 5 teams being 4,984.8.  The 2012 season was best attendance season for the division for the past 9 years with an average of  5,371 people attending the games.

Spokane's Franchise Men? Part 1

It was announced earlier today that the Spokane Chiefs would be trading a large portion of their bread and butter in an opportunity to change their coarse. The trade is centered around Anthony Bardaro and Luke Lee-Knight of the Chiefs, for Todd Fiddler and Eric Williams of Prince Albert.   The press release stated that,

"We felt it was important for our team to strengthen our goal tending position," Chiefs General Manager Tim Speltz said. "Eric is a proven starter in our league and we feel comfortable that with him and Mac Engel we have done just that." "Todd Fiddler scored 23 goals as a 17-year-old last season but hasn't found the same success this year. We expect a change will help him achieve those numbers,"

and to keep a healthy goal tending competition going, is a long term wise move.  

Frankly, the team switcharoo is not the brightest of ideas why?  Two dynamics are at play here: One the  bread winners verse the people who butter the team's muffins affectionately known as Revenues vs Payouts.  The second of which is the fan experience. 

A Franchise Player is paramount to the fan experience,  (in the WHL most franchise men are temporary but that is the design of the league) so much that fans will get up and cheer at the slight whisper of the players name.  That player fills the seats, that player becomes a symbol, that player makes it to the background of the team's program, that player makes it into folklore, that player spans the generations and that player makes his team valuable.   The fans in Portland still talk about Cam Neely in the stands between periods nearly 3 decades later.

Anthony Bardaro is the franchise hopes on a bad day, he is the offensive drive when the team is on a losing streak he is Mr Comeback.  To trade him away is like changing the wind direction while trying to cross the ocean.  What did the feathered S do?  The team took down its sail's and hopes the drift will keep them going through the playoffs.

Without drive a team will fail to fill the seats, fail to earn more for their scouts fail to be able to recruit the next best Coach, you get my drift.

Now all of this is speculation except for one thing, the Fans.  Teams having a shut outs night in and night out will bring less spectators to the arena than high scoring games.  The NHL is going through this right now.  Is it better to have a higher scoring game to fill the seats or is it better to have bigger shot attempts?  They say yes and are actively looking for ways to bring the game back up to the scoring levels of the 1980's.