Jasperoni
The only reason Chicago does so bad is cause their team isn't doing very well. Once all those players they picked up in the draft start making sparks you will see all the fair weather fans come out and Chcago will have a sold out game every night. That 65% consists of the die hard season ticket holders and the people who either just decided to go see a Blackhawks game because they had nothing better to do or won / received the tickets from somewhere.
That's actually very true. It's pretty surprising to me that they're not doing better, given that Chicago has roughly 8 million people.
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Those places are just average hockey cities. But go to Vancouver or Calgary alone and you will find massive ammounts of die hards. Just look at the Vancouver vs Calgary first round series. Games at GM Place (Vancouver) the crowd was a white and blue wave while waving their white Canuck towels. Then you go to the Saddledome (Calgary) and the entire arena is wearing red, no towels, but the sea of red looked really cool.
We have something similar where I live, only with football. I've seen stuff like that before with Nebraska games, 77,000 clad in red and white and lining the stadiums. With the hockey teams here, it's a bit different though.
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The only other team to ever pull that off would have to be Phoenix with the sea of white. But they had to give out those tshirts and towels. Vancouver and Calgary there wasn't anything handed out except those white Canucks towels. Even then all the fans were wearing a jersey and sporting a hat.
I'm not sure of the cost of a hockey jersey up there, but they're pretty expensive down here. Not many people would be willing to shell out $70 for a shirt like that... the ticket prices and concessions are bad enough at a game already.
Hockey in the US is a blue-collar sport, and yet all 3 of those things have white-collar prices. I think that has an affect on the fanbase here as much as anything.
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Thats what makes the game fun up here, all the motivation of the playoffs.
I can't speak for every team's fans (actually, I don't think I'm qualified to speak for any at all
xd ), but that's when the fanbase actually comes out is during the playoffs. You'll find a lot of the ho-humming during the regular season, especially around the All-Star break where it's too late to keep that freshness and too early to drum up excitement about the playoffs.