To those NMU fans reading this thread, yes, unfortunately the 'college atmosphere' at UAA games is pretty lacking attendance wise (as is the arena itself). In UAA's defense it is a non-traditional University, meaning that a significant part of the student body is not composed of the typical young adult set that you see at many lower 48 universities. As of the fall of 09' only 48% of the student population was between the ages of 18-24. As such, (and this is just my hypothesis) many of the students who might otherwise go are probably engaged in activities typical of older adults such as spending time with their own families at home, dining at restaurants, bar hopping, etc. The cost of tickets (as has been much debated on UAA threads already) may also be a factor but without hard numbers it's hard to know if this is really a significant deterrent to attending games or not. Of course team performance may be a factor as well, but as has been mentioned already by Suze the Seawolves are doing much better this season and attendance hasn't matched that improvement. It may be too soon yet for that improved performance to 'gel' with the populace. If they start to have consecutive winning seasons (especially with home ice for playoffs) this improvement may start to positively affect game attendance.
One attendance related anomaly is that the Sullivan arena was commonly sold out or had much greater attendance for some games in the mid to late 90's, but not much has changed in 20 years to easily explain that discrepancy. One culprit that has been mentioned is that there were fewer entertainment options in Anchorage as a whole back then, and perhaps more importantly the Alaska Aces were not a significant presence competing for the hockey fan's almighty dollar and fickle attention. As the Alaska Aces (Anchorage's ECHL team) surged in popularity in the early 00's after they joined the ECHL, perhaps they started to siphon off a good percentage of that former UAA fan base. In any case, I've sometimes thought that Anchorage is not big enough yet to support two major hockey franchises (the Alaska Aces and the UAA Seawolves). I have a hunch that it certainly can, but some dynamic will have to change for that to happen.
And as for lack of a band, if the bipolar bears up in Fairbanks can have a pep band for their games, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility for UAA to have a pep band as well. Unfortunately I don't have an answer as to why there is no (at least as far as I can tell) formal relationship between the athletic dept. and UAA's department of music that could make a pep band possible. I know it's not as simple as just throwing a band together and shuffling them out to each game, but I would imagine there is no lack of musical talent at UAA that could fill those shoes, they just need someone to spearhead that initiative to make it happen. The Seawolf Thunder drum troupe was certainly interesting and definitely added much needed pep to the game but (and not to disparage their efforts in any way) to me it never really matched the synchronous energy you can get from true college pep bands. Ultimately whether or not UAA gets a pep band (and increased attendance, etc) probably hinges as always on whether or not it eventually gets its own ice arena. And a new arena, of course, has been the topic of endless debate on many Seawolves threads on USCHO and other UAA related sites.
I didn't even touch on the administrative and coaching kerfluffle that occurred in 2013, but that is already well documented in some of the other UAA threads on this site.
This is probably way more than you wanted to know about our program, but just some food for thought from a former UAA student.
NMU is a strong team, and I have a feeling we will be playing them in First Round. Geez wouldn't that be poetic? 
