Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

This is obviously pretty close to being in the "no-chance" category I would think, and it's only tangentially related to the Badgers, but UWM is looking at adding hockey.

Aside from the pre-requisite "it'll never happen" arguments (you know... like where would they play and can they draw enough fans to make money off of it), yeah that would be pretty awesome.

To be honest, though, between UWM, Marquette and UWGB, the Panthers have always been my vote for the least likely to ever go down that road.

 

[JDUBBS1280]

Aside from the pre-requisite "it'll never happen" arguments (you know... like where would they play and can they draw enough fans to make money off of it), yeah that would be pretty awesome.

To be honest, though, between UWM, Marquette and UWGB, the Panthers have always been my vote for the least likely to ever go down that road.

Marquette had a D1 program in the past.

 

[SCSU Euro]

also a nice article on Jake Gardiner


"Going into Wisconsin, I knew the coaching staff was superior and knew I needed to work on my defensive game, which is why I chose Wisconsin in the first place," Gardiner said. "They helped me develop into an all-around defenseman and just a guy who can skate the puck up.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=597549

that bolded part is for our rodent friends

Not trying to start up anything, I certainly have no reason to build up the Gophers, but I heard they never sniffed around him and he took it personally and part of his decision was going somewhere to stick it to the Gophers as well as improve his game.

Could have gotten bad info though...

 

[JDUBBS1280]

Not trying to start up anything, I certainly have no reason to build up the Gophers, but I heard they never sniffed around him and he took it personally and part of his decision was going somewhere to stick it to the Gophers as well as improve his game.

Could have gotten bad info though...

Not sure about the revenge angle (not sure either way), but I don't believe the Gophers pursued him. Thanks John Hill.

 

[SCSU Euro]

Not sure about the revenge angle (not sure either way), but I don't believe the Gophers pursued him. Thanks John Hill.

I listened to a great interview just before the Frozen Four two seasons ago and someone asked why Max was going to be a Gopher when he was a Badger. His response was, "He always was a Mama's Boy."

 

[JDUBBS1280]

I listened to a great interview just before the Frozen Four two seasons ago and someone asked why Max was going to be a Gopher when he was a Badger. His response was, "He always was a Mama's Boy."

Ha! That is pretty funny

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Not sure about the revenge angle (not sure either way), but I don't believe the Gophers pursued him. Thanks John Hill.

I love that everything the Gophers have done wrong the past few years has been blamed on John Hill, regardless of him having any impact at all.

Guentzel was the one recruiting defensemen when Jake Gardiner was being recruited.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I love that everything the Gophers have done wrong the past few years has been blamed on John Hill, regardless of him having any impact at all.

Guentzel was the one recruiting defensemen when Jake Gardiner was being recruited.

1. Depends on who you talk too. I don't blame Hill for everything. Not even close.
2. As for Gardiner, he's entitled to his opinion but there are plenty of good NHL defensemen that used to wear a Gopher sweater.

 

[JDUBBS1280]

I love that everything the Gophers have done wrong the past few years has been blamed on John Hill, regardless of him having any impact at all.

Guentzel was the one recruiting defensemen when Jake Gardiner was being recruited.

I realize that. I just like blaming John

I do think he was a major factor, but wasn't solely responsible (for Gophers struggles, not Gardiner that is).

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

This is obviously pretty close to being in the "no-chance" category I would think, and it's only tangentially related to the Badgers, but UWM is looking at adding hockey.

I think U.S. Cellular Arena would be an option given that the building was built to suit hockey. I understand they haven't made ice there in a while, and it would cost money to get that going again but it's feasable.

Update: Someone sent me this tweet, "they would have no problem building a place. Very very big money behind this"...no clue on the credibility of that.

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Made a separate thread to discuss the UW-Milwaukee stuff. You can find that here.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I took a deeper look at attendence and I think there is a troubling trend.

2011 2010 2009
NM 9444 AL H 10769 CC 11751
NM 11158 AL H 11734 CC 13126
Sue 10594 MT 11295 NH 11490
Sue 12077 MT 12690 NH 12351
UNO 9713 Sue 13601 Rats 12508
UNO11207 Sue 15325 Rats 14063
64193 75414 75289

A loss of over 11,000 over the first 3 weeks is a bad trend. All 3 yrs include halloween, 1 marque matchup and 1 n/c series, so I think the 3 weeks are very comparable. 2010 Alabama Huntsville outdrew NM in 2011, when the NM is on paper a better draw. 2010 MT outdrew the Sue in 2011 (holy crap) and attendance for the sue in 2011 was 3,000 less than in 2010 (double holy crap). Something is amiss with the attending fanbase.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I took a deeper look at attendence and I think there is a troubling trend.

2011 2010 2009
NM 9444 AL H 10769 CC 11751
NM 11158 AL H 11734 CC 13126
Sue 10594 MT 11295 NH 11490
Sue 12077 MT 12690 NH 12351
UNO 9713 Sue 13601 Rats 12508
UNO11207 Sue 15325 Rats 14063
64193 75414 75289

A loss of over 11,000 over the first 3 weeks is a bad trend. All 3 yrs include halloween, 1 marque matchup and 1 n/c series, so I think the 3 weeks are very comparable. 2010 Alabama Huntsville outdrew NM in 2011, when the NM is on paper a better draw. 2010 MT outdrew the Sue in 2011 (holy crap) and attendance for the sue in 2011 was 3,000 less than in 2010 (double holy crap). Something is amiss with the attending fanbase.

Some thoughts and things I've observed...

- I've seen a random late season series against Mankato or UAA nearly sell out and then the first round of the playoffs struggle to get 12k. Makes no sense...

- Along the same lines, I've seen pre Xmas games against good opponents undersell and the aforementioned late season series against inferior opponents sell out. Makes no sense...

- I believe that people are more and more unwilling to sit in the 300s due to the poor sight lines. Makes a LOT of sense...

- This is an area that is home to a LOT of public employees and the pay cut that they all got hit in September. I know how this has affected my own household and we are having to adjust where and on what we spend the disposable income that we still have. Not making a political statement, just stating a fact and I know that many around here are in the same boat.


To me, it's ridiculous that the UW charges full price for seats in the 300s, which are obstructed view seats for hockey. I've long believed that there are around 10k true blue UW hockey fans in this area. The rest are casual fans or bandwagoneers. This was great at the Coliseum as it guaranteed a full building and created a real demand for seats. I remember searching outside (before I had season tix) and paying double face for tix at the coliseum for games against even the weak sisters of the WCHA.

Back to the 300s. You cannot see the full ice surface from those seats unless you are in the first row. There is NO WAY IN THE WORLD I would ever go to ANY game and sit up there. It's just not worth the frustration of not being able to see.

Not everyone is like me in this regard, but I believe that the UW should sell those seats for $10 each, just to get butts in the seats. There must be a point of diminishing returns that one of UW's economists could figure out and say, this is the ticket price that would not only get people to buy and sit up there but where concession and Bucky's Locker Room sales would make up for, or even exceed the difference in ticket price.

I just don't think that there are enough rabid fans in this area to overcome the poor sight lines at the current price point. You gotta bring in the bandwagon and casual fans if you want to have a better chance at a sellout.

I cannot explain all of the empty seats in the 100s & 200s.

Make the rink NHL sized, and you could at least fix the sight line issue. Not sure that it would fix the problem of having a finite number of fans though.


One final thought. Just heard a commercial where there are hoops ticket packages that include the Marquette game available. This was unheard of just a few years ago and the hoops team is picked to finish 2nd in the B1G.

 

[Almington]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I took a deeper look at attendance and I think there is a troubling trend.

2011 2010 2009
NM 9444 AL H 10769 CC 11751
NM 11158 AL H 11734 CC 13126
Sue 10594 MT 11295 NH 11490
Sue 12077 MT 12690 NH 12351
UNO 9713 Sue 13601 Rats 12508
UNO11207 Sue 15325 Rats 14063
64193 75414 75289

A loss of over 11,000 over the first 3 weeks is a bad trend. All 3 yrs include halloween, 1 marque matchup and 1 n/c series, so I think the 3 weeks are very comparable. 2010 Alabama Huntsville outdrew NM in 2011, when the NM is on paper a better draw. 2010 MT outdrew the Sue in 2011 (holy crap) and attendance for the sue in 2011 was 3,000 less than in 2010 (double holy crap). Something is amiss with the attending fanbase.

Last season the team was coming off a F4 appearance and they were not competing with a Saturday night football games. I suspect that you would see a similar fall between the 07 and 08 seasons.

Add to that the fact the larger economic issues faced by public employees and it isn't a surprise to me that attendance is down. Wouldn't surprise me if some people had to choose between football and hockey tickets this season and picked football single game tickets over early season hockey games.

I'm sure that the variation is large (particularly when you consider the unused tickets because of the football games these past two weekends, but I'll need to see a much longer data set to see if this is any type of trend. I don't think that three home series in, considering that they were competing against very nice fall weather, a top ranked football team playing night games, localized economic issues, and a team who came into the season with low expectations after poor results the previous season, that it is time to panic yet, and even if it was at that point I don't know what UW could even do.

 

[NMH]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I sit in those god-awful 300 seats because those are the seats they offer for the 5-pack. We drive in from Milwaukee, so we can't feasibly make more games than that a year - it averages out to one Saturday night game a month.

They changed the 5-pack up this year, which kind of sucks. I'm not sure which tickets they're using for the 3-pack - but the 5-pack is $80/each and the 3-pack is $72/each. $8 for 2 more games??? We get 5 games for the price of 4 and we have tix in hand and a schedule set for the whole season. That's worth it to us. We get to pick the opponents we see. That means we have to sit in about the 5th row at center ice on the penalty box side.

 

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Yeah, if it's not in the first few rows, I refuse to go in the 300 level. I like being able to see the entire rink.

Picky, right?

 

[solovsfett]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

my hope is the attendance this year has been badly skewed on saturdays due to the dumb football team playing msu and osu at 7pm on back to back saturdays. that wipes the casual fans right out of the equation...also I suppose the brewers game(s) during nmu didn't help either for the same reason

but honestly if they cannot sell-out vs. nodak and average about 12k per game otherwise something is amiss and I'd be hard pressed to answer what the cause is other than the general state of the economy which probably kills walk-up sales

 

[SCSU Euro]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Booking the trip for the St. Cloud series in February, and have a question: does anyone know of any issues with the Doubletree Hilton at 525 W. Johnson? I'm trying to figure out why a 3 1/2 star hotel with a pool that's actually a smidge closer to the Kohl is basically the same price (like $4 difference) as the University Inn we stayed at last time.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Are most of the 100 level seats season ticket holders?

 

[Crainer]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Was at the game last week, and there were a ton of empty seats everywhere. The end opposite of the student section had a lot of seats.