This is false, you truly hate my favorite team and my favorite team alone

Respect for wearing a Utica jersey, was born/lived in Utica for 15 years. Live about 10 minutes away now.

Shannon, thank you for your dedication to bringing your opinion, news, and insight to the game we love. Watching hockey became even more interesting and entertaining after I discovered you a few years ago, listening to your input helps pass by the time as well. Your commitment to the game and bringing us the facts is incredible.

The Sabres have won the fans back through last season. The building was empty at the start of the season, no one wanted to go including myself. After the fans realized this team was able to continue to win and contend for the playoffs, they started showing up again. The building was packed and rocking every night in the second half of the season. I think all Sabres fans can agree we are extremely grateful for this organization finally putting a product on the ice that we are all proud of and that shares the same passion for this game and this team that us fans have. LET'S GO BUFFALO!!!!!!!!!

Shannon you are absolutely killing it with that Utica tarp. Godspeed man

Bolts also got lucky with their owner, guys buys up the restaurants and bars around the arena, buys the team expects to take a loss every year with the team, donates heavily to charity in the area through team events and makes it all back through his real estate around the arena. That helps out a ton, knowing if the product on the ice is good the people will spend spend spend around the arena when going to games.

Love the 32 team videos. Helps get through the NHL off-season. The time and effort in making the videos is amazing.

Columbus had some of the highest single-day attendance records throughout the season, including multiple sellouts. Despite being bottom 5 almost all year, people kept coming to watch hockey. Columbus is indeed a hockey town and it hurts when others write us off. I just hope we can finally get some playoff success soon.

I go back to the 70's with the NHL, and the attendance today, generally speaking, is miles ahead of what it used to be in those days, when you had teams in Oakland , Kansas City and other places, where they were drawing crowds of less than 6-7,000. Even markets that are, for the most part, healthy, like LA and St, Louis and Pittsburgh, went through some rough times drawing people into their buildings.

So many props for the time stamps. Thanks for not forcing me to search for my division. Found you recently, really like your content. Many thanks.

I laughed when you mentioned the camera angle for Sharks games. It’s so damn high.

Hello from Utica, thanks for representing our city for this video

Thanks for the amazing content all season/year long. Being a new hockey fan (Go Kraken!) your game breakdowns and team deep dives have been a wonderful resource for learning the ins and outs/ intricacies of this great sport and it's teams!

Love the Utica jersey!! 😈😈

Good overview of the league. Keep up the good work.

It’s astounding how many Hartford Whalers alumni are coaching/managing NHL clubs…. i.e. Dean Evason, Ron Francis, Pat Verbeek, Paul Maurice (last head coach), among others.

I appreciate your balance with this. - An Oilers fan

Hopefully attendance in NJ continues to go up as the team gets even better!

Vegas attendance: if/when the team falters in the future they will be able to fall back on fans of visiting teams coming in to see the road team. At a minimum this will supplement their regular attendance in a way that doesn’t apply to any other NHL city.

Love this style of video

I love your hat and sweater today! Go Devils

I'm really early. Love the content!! Keep up the great work!!!

Its awesome to see how many Utica fans watch Shannon. Lot of hockey fans here.

Love the hat dude! I have the Whalers version 🤙🤙🤙

Great looking jersey !

If there is an attendance problem in Florida next year I will travel from Finland to Florida to fix that by one.

I am really suprised of the attendance overall

Your shows are so awesome. So glad I came across this!!!!

Shannon! i love your whiteboard stats. (from Sweden).

Amazed you even mentioned the western conference tbh. Nice change of pace for you.

I love the vids especially finally getting your honest opinion on every team excited to see your options on mh rangers and the current state of your canucks and Bruins

excellent video

Super Upload!

Great breakdown...I took the liberty of parsing some of the attendance stats. (I hope I got the figures right, because I had a hard time seeing some of them - especially in the Metro). So, Canadian teams averaged at 95.7%, US at 95.2%. The O6 teams came in at 96.2%. I broke the rest of the non-Canadian teams into three groups: West Coast (including Arizona and Colorado) - 7 teams at 94.9% (the lagging California teams dragged everybody else down); Sun Belt - 5 teams in the South, Texas, and Florida at 97.3%, and; Rust Belt (all other US teams outside the O6 - usually in the North, except for DC) at 95.2%...The one number that screams out of all this is for the so-called "NASCAR" teams, who are often derided as "non-hockey markets". Yes, one could make the argument that all of those teams are strong at the moment, and there has always been some question about the fans being fair weather fans who abandon their teams in down years. But I think that's true of any market as we can see in California, and in Buffalo at the moment...As for Florida, they have a big geography problem with that arena in Sunrise. That part of Broward County is almost irrelevant to Dade County - the biggest pop center of that SoFla market - due to distance, traffic, and tolls. They really need to be somewhere closer to Miami-Dade - maybe Miramar, Miami Gardens, or Opa Locka, but certainly no farther north than Hollywood. That is a heavy lift to secure a venue in that area, but right now for fans it's a 7 or 8 hour time investment to get from Miami proper to Sunrise (to-game commute, game itself, then home commute from Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, (cringe!) or Miami Beach - all areas with incomes sufficient to afford multiple game tickets, say nothing of being the 6th Borough of New York. Yeah, the rent may be cheap in Sunrise for the Panthers, but in the end it costs them terribly in attendance...

The thing about Vegas is most of us that live here are from other parts of the country, alot from hockey hotbeds like the upper midwest and new england. So yes everybody has their old team they still route for, but this town fell in love with the Knights that first year, plus they're just doing better than all our old teams lol. People don't realize how many true hockey fans are here.

Well said. A+ video.

If the Flyers keep Torts for his contract term, I'm perfectly fine with Briere starting out here. Hiring Jones has many upset at not looking outside the organization... however, Jones is basically an on ice pro scout who's seen every team and every guy first hand for how many years now? He knows what works in the NHL and he openly admits the team is not good. Saying we don't have a #1 D man is such a breath of fresh air. I truly believe they're going to turn this ship around and in a couple years we'll be watching a really fun product on the ice that's ready to make that jump.

Not a buffalo fan traditionally, but once you started talking about them couple months into the season, I decided to check them out. Man did they win me over. Every game, win, or lose, was exciting to watch. I think that they are on the up and up as well. I see a lot of potential there.

This was a cool snapshot of the management around the league. It struck me how many of them were players when I started watching hockey in the 90s. What current players do you think would be most likely to become coaches/GMs in the future?

Awesome jersey the Hockey Dude!!...

good fair thanks for making this show

The attendance factor in Fl is well documented. Most Floridians are NY/NJ/NE transplants who won’t go support the Panthers unless their team is playing us. There is great core support here, the game is growing, there’s no threat with Vinny Viola owning the club that it will ever move. Ever. The lease will be worked to give Fla more of the revenue and that will be that. We can rediscuss this in 20 yrs. Go Cats.

The panthers arena also almost has 20,000 seats for hockey so the percentages can be a little misleading. But like you said, hopefully this run is what was needed to solidify packed buildings every night.

Thanks!

LET'S GOO PANTHERS!!! LOVE THE CHANNELL BRO.

Ayeee nice jersey! That’s my home team 💪🏼

Well like you said, most of the season Panthers weren’t playing well. Last time they didn’t have a sell out was 4/6 against Ottawa, and they were less than 400 seats from that selling out.

As an avs fan we sold out every game this season. I’m a season ticket holder. I didn’t see many if any empty seats

San Jose was a crazy franchise to support this year. I work at the rank and surprisingly we had higher merch sales than many years prior, and throughout the whole season

(Pens fan here). The article on 'The Athletic' by Josh Yowe (sp) and one other portrays the Pens front office as dysfunctional. Even discounting what happened during the "dad's trip", the trades (Granlund in particular), the signings (Carter with a NMC), the negotiations (Malkin), Hextall was a disaster. (I also can't believe Burke let all this happen) You treat people a certain way. Yes, hockey is business masquerading as entertainment, (Cue North Dallas Forty), but still. FSG can't "throw money" at the Pens like they do with the other teams they own. (Salary Cap). The next GM has some serious decisions to make (Goalie), and some awful, awful contracts to shed - somehow.

"Tampa Bay" also refers to the area around the body of water, called "Tampa Bay" So Tampa Bay is all inclusive for the area. like the Panthers, we have a lot of transplants that invade our arena.

Woooooo New Jersey!!!

As a Columbus guy, I need a Stanley Cup run. That is a step beyond a "playoff" run. After 20+ years, the time has come. Look at Seattle and Las Vegas. To me, the only real problem is that the top free agents do not want to come to Columbus. That would include their own free agents. Johnny Gaudreau was a step in the right direction, but not _near_ enough. And when Gaudreau decided on Columbus, everyone wondered aloud, why Columbus? How do you solve the negative reputation that keeps free agents away? I don't know.

just subbed 5 seconds in cause of that sweater room

Great breakdown! Funny you mention the talk about fan support when a team is not winning. I started following the VGK right after the SD Chargers situation leaving for LA, and I'm always have had a problem giving taxpayer funds to a private sports team's stadium for taxpayers that may or may not be a sports fan of that particular team. When people like to flaunt they always support a team even when they are losing, I just see that as corporate welfare, especially when they threaten to move the team unless the taxpayers take up billion dollar contracts to build them new stadiums. On that note, I'd love to see a breakdown of where people's money goes when they buy a ticket, jersey, etc. Examples (random guess): $100 Replica Jersey = 50% Owner, 30% player, 10% NHLPA, 10% shop.... Live Ticket = .... Keep up the great content!

Yeah Shannon Let’s Go Comets, Let’s Go Devils!! Fitzy was snubbed

Much respect for that Comets jersey

Love the Utica jersey but do you happen to have an Albany River Rats/Albany Devils jersey?

one of the if not the best hockey youtuber outhere

Thank you for shouting out that the Lightning have the longest sellout streak in the league. That is correct and we could fill an additional Tampa Bay with the tears of "traditional" market fans who have to acknowledge that we're better at selling our barn than their teams.

San Jose didn’t wear stealth this year lol but I get your point

Went to my first and last Flames game at the old Saddledome this fall... was pretty nice. Would be cool to have an upgrade.

For some reason when Shannon started talking about players on the Ducks I thought of Mathews playing next to Zegras. That would be mighty entertaining.

THANKS

Interesting video. The attendance in San Jose jumped out at me. Team has to be a bit alarmed, and it might explain why they've resisted a rebuild for a long time. Same concerns may exist in Winnipeg. I agree that if Panther's head counts don't improve after this incredible cup run they're on, the organization would have to start to wonder a bit. I'm happy to see Buffalo's situation has started to improve. It was really looking bleak not that long ago. CBJ have to start getting better, or their numbers may drop dramatically.

Vegas attendance is so good because the visiting team fans travel to see their team play in Vegas. I am from St. Louis and we travel every year to see the Blues play there, I would say at least 40% are Blues fans when we go there. Lot of "lets go Blues" chants when I have been there.

Concerning the Tampa Bay - Tanner Jeannot trade. Give it time. Consensus was that Branden Hagel cost too much after he took time to adjust to Tampa's game and didn't help in last years playoffs. Now he is an unbelievable value, maybe another "Brayden Point". Not saying Jeannot is that kind of player but give it a year before you call it "bad"

I like the funky roof on the Saddledome.

Love the comets jersey. I live near Watertown if you ever want a FHL wolves jersey let me know.

I was thinking about Nashville today and looking them over. To me, this is a team poised to hang around the playoff line for 3 or so more years then fall off sharply. I do wonder if Trotz might be well advised to sell high on some of his older players and try to rejeuventate to a team that has more than one key player under the age of 30. I think there are a number of teams out there that would give up assets for Matt Duchene, based on his past 2 seasons and them only being signed for 3 more.

wait this is a crazy video i like this idea

This guy knows hockey, we should call him the hockey guy

What kind of pricing do these teams have, I think that would have been a valuable addition to this board.

Honestly when I was in Vegas last Fall I was really surprised how much Vegas has taken to the Golden Knights. I’d imagine a lot is being first to the punch and the fact Vegas has always been quite good, but I absolutely could see it sticking even in bad times…I mean they’ve got the Raiders and probably A’s so when you’re the one relative winner in town…

UTICA!!!! SHANNON YOU NEED TO COME TO UTICA!! For a comets game ofc

Sweet Utica Comets jersey!! LGD

Would have been nice to include the average ticket price and/or the ticket price range.

I absolutely loved Craig Conroy when he played for the Blues. I truly wish him all the best in Calgary (except of course when they play the Blues).

Personally...as a Wings fan, Looking at the what was left as far as their AHL team, prospects and contracts at the end of the Holland Era, I am tickled pink with where they are now. Now I know it wasn't ALL Holland's fault, as the owner dictate making the playoffs over a retool/rebuild...but the difference in 4 years is night and day.

this should go over well

Something to consider: Many arenas use the term sell out when there are no consecutive seats unsold. So the estimates could be thrown off because of that.

thank you

The main move the Jets need to make is getting rid of Cheveldayoff. You just cannot be a GM of a team for 12 seasons and only have 3 playoff series wins. He is too conservative. Proper changes cannot happen for this team until they start at the top. And I believe that is why attendance is not where it once was. The honeymoon period is over. Fans aren't happy just to have a team again. They want a contender. And they don't want to pay higher ticket prices to see a mediocre product.

Put it this way: I favor the Yzerplan over the Shanaplan.

Shannon, you're not the only one who thought adding a light only visible when a (non-retractable) seat at The Tank is unoccupied was a weird idea. During the Sharks' last few playoff years, the Sharks handed out wristbands at each playoff game -- initially single-color and later multi-colored, controllable either by code or by section. I believe during our last playoff season, they discontinued the wristbands and added the seat lights, which were visible when everyone stood during the national anthem and pre-game, when not everyone had made it to their seats. But now that the playoffs are a distant memory and regular-season attendance is way down -- 79.2% must be tickets issued; typically more than half the seats were empty at the games I attended (~16) -- they've turned into empty seat beacons. They make a much nicer light show now, but they're a constant reminder that the team is playing badly and there are more empty seats than bodies at most games.

Issue with Florida’s arena is the location… people in South Florida always supported the Panthers but the arena is far from the main population centers and is literally the edge of the swamp. Literally, if you look west from the top of the arena, there is the Sawgrass Express and then a long stretch of marsh land.

Utica reppin, absolutely love it

Utica native here🔥🔥

Sick hat

Big attendance issue for Ottawa this year was the terrible start in November. At the start attendance was good but once November was underway fans just figured it was another terrible year but attendance was very high towards the end of the season when they turned it around

The one thing you have to remember about Vegas, is that it’s one of the most visited tourist destinations in the country. You have people coming from all over the place to come spend money and have fun so I’m sure that even if the team was trash they would be full almost every night from visitors of other teams or just people wanting to see a hockey game.

Me personally, canucks will be in mediocre hell (seems to be the place we’re most comfortable) as long as we’re in this “stay competitive” era

Sharks may not have a cup rn, but least the jerseys should be more affordable at the right time with that adidas contract ending. New uniforms look clean too

Sick jersey I work in utica

Where did you get the comets jersey? I’ve been looking and I don’t know if I should get it from their website itself or the AHL.

I tell ya being a Wild fan is hard just because it feels like this is a team that is ok with being just a tad above average. Just good enough to give us false hope and then let us down in the first round of the playoffs every year. I'm also a fan of the Lightning and the Stars which tend to even things out I guess lol. Great commentary as always!

I love San Jose fans say they got such a good atmosphere and fan attendance and that they’re underrated yet only have 79% attendance lmfao.

As a French who is regularly but reluctantly subjected to Champions League football games (yes, soccer, argue with the wall), I find it so wild that attendance could so low as 80 something%. I'm used to seeing absolutely packed stadiums. Add to that the whole franchise relocation, and it's quite the culture shock!

My MAN! In that just too sweet Comets jersey....

The Blue Jackets 3rd line next season is going to be so good. I think the blue jackets will finish in about the same place that the Penguins & Islanders did this past season.