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Wisconsin Hockey 21-22: Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

Timothy A said:
I am at the point in my life where I can actually afford season tickets and I have the time to use them. Now it's just sad that they suck so bad I don't want to spend the money on them. It also sucks when you go to watch them on tv and your goal for them is not not embarrass themselves.
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You're certainly welcome to ride along with 2 big Avalanche fans on our next road trip.
 
ExileOnDaytonStreet said:
The fan culture and experience was dying well before then, if you ask me.

I could tell a notable difference in the atmosphere in the Kohl during the 2005-06 and 2009-10 campaigns: The fans weren’t as loud, the student section less full, the band was more regularly being shut out in favor of canned music on the PA system.

Those were two winning seasons, each before the Penn State announcement, so I’m going to say that the root cause goes deeper. And I’m probably not even qualified to guess what exactly that cause was. I usually point to the canned music, but perhaps that’s more of a symptom than a cause.

Roughly a decade of bad hockey and the loss of a sense of tradition has certainly made all of the problems (exponentially?) worse: going to a Badger game now feels less like a collegiate event and more like a low-rent minor league game. Given that things were trending this way before realignment or the sense that Eaves had to go, I doubt it’s coming back even if the team wins more games and wins back fans.
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I was able to attend opening weekend in Madison. The Kohl center is unbelievable for a college venue, just gorgeous. But a co worker and Badger alum admitted that it diminishes the college game experience by being so over the top. I understand what he means. But its really a nice facility. I'm sure I'm repeating what many have said already: Big-10 football rivalries have nothing to do with hockey (and for the love of Pete, stop making hockey helmets like the football helmets!!). You still have the Gopher rivalry, but all the rest from the core hockey schools - UMD, UND, Tech to a lesser degree, the rest of old WCHA, are gone.
 
ExileOnDaytonStreet said:
I guess that’s good news as far as the locker room is considered.

I haven’t looked at who’s in the portal, but I did see a reputable tweet intimating that the Krygier twins might be in there?
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Yeah, a slice of positivity there. TG has not lost the players, which is a shock.

Cryers...I saw one on the portal list.
 
model94 said:
I was able to attend opening weekend in Madison. The Kohl center is unbelievable for a college venue, just gorgeous. But a co worker and Badger alum admitted that it diminishes the college game experience by being so over the top. I understand what he means.
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Watts is over the top? Please expound.
 
The stuff that makes it not have a college game experience isn’t really about the Kohl Center itself, but the game day experience.

Its the stupid legends race. Filling time with goofy stuff on the score board. Playing canned music on the PA instead of letting the band do it’s thing. The resulting anemia of the student section because all each of those things do is stifle whatever life might otherwise grow outwards from sections 113-117.

When fans are in the seats, and the crowd is allowed to be a crowd, and the band is allowed to do its thing… the Kohl Center is as magical as anywhere else.

To this day, my time as a Crease Creature is the most fun I’ve ever had at a sporting event. And there’s some excellent competition for that claim.

It’d be possible to happen again if it weren’t for [gestures vaguely at the last 15 years].
 
Timothy A said:
Watts is over the top? Please expound.
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Facilities can be and are great for recruiting. They can also be great for fan comfort. But if you’ve traveled to other smaller and less elaborate barns, it is the size that actually creates a lot of the atmosphere and charm at the college level. I would take Tech’s arena (for a less elaborate and less comfortable example) or Notre Dame’s arena (many of the same modern amenities as the KC, just much smaller, and therefore rocking even with a 2,500 person crowd) over a cavernous Kohl Center that requires 10-12,000 to feel full and loud. That’s simply a lot to ask if any college hockey community on a consistent basis, regardless of a team’s history or legacy.
 
Goalie shake-up....shocker.....Grannon heading to PSU, McClennan transfering from Hurst, 3 years left. TG must be a heck of a salesman.
 
The best atmosphere I’ve ever been a part of was the D3 championship in 2019 at KB Willett Arena (capacity of 1800 or so). Had to wait 45-60 minutes in line just to get into the building an hour early. OT winner for UWSP to finish the season undefeated and bring back the 6th National Championship blew the roof off the top of the building.

I say this is as someone who had Saturday season tickets when the Kohl Center was getting 13,000+ fans a night.
 
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Well if we start playing at La Bahn, the program is pretty much waiving the white flag.

Not that I trust anyone in the AD to make the current situation better anyway.
 
Most of the diehards who went to the Dane County Colesium have either grown too old to attend the games OR have tuned out Wisconsin hockey due to numerous aforementioned factors.

it will take decades to build a new fan base. Decades of winning and building new traditions. PSU has proven you can create or build atmosphere in the modern era.

Wisconsin would rather stay lazy and go through the motions.
 
solovsfett said:
Most of the diehards who went to the Dane County Colesium have either grown too old to attend the games OR have tuned out Wisconsin hockey due to numerous aforementioned factors.

it will take decades to build a new fan base. Decades of winning and building new traditions. PSU has proven you can create or build atmosphere in the modern era.

Wisconsin would rather stay lazy and go through the motions.
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Pegula Arena at PSU has a great atmosphere, largely because it seats 6,000, so even a crowd of 4,000 seems huge and loud. I know the KC has rocked at capacity in the past. But when capacity is 15,000, you really have a huge mountain to climb before it feels as full and loud as a 6,000-seat barn. The building is great, it’s just at such an outlying end in the size of college hockey arenas that even when we technically sell top-3 ticket numbers nationwide even in bad years, it still is far from the full seats that are needed to not “seem” empty. There is something to be said for why almost every other college hockey arena is half or less of the capacity of the KC. It makes it way harder to build to “full.” I’ll take the atmosphere of a consistently full 4,000 seat arena like Notre Dame’s over a crowd of 7-9,000 at the KC any day.
 
digitalbooya said:
I don't think the Kohl Center atmosphere is the problem. People will come see a winning team.
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I agree with this. I think you'd get close to capacity for the B16 teams if UW was ranked in the top 10.

It would have been interesting to see the attendance for the Goal Caufield year.
 
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