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The Canadiens are the attendance kings, but for how much longer?

 Manuel Sperandio-Lemay
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The Canadiens are the attendance kings, but for how much longer?

Last season, the Canadiens finished 32nd and last in the league. This season, it wasn’t much better, finishing 28th. I don’t know about you, but it seemed harder to survive the end of this season than the last. Between the arrival of Martin St-Louis and the deaths of Guy Lafleur and Mike Bossy, the end of the season passed almost like a gust of wind. But this season was one long, interminable agony. The guys had given up, and it showed. 21,078 times. 21,078, as in the average number of people who attended our not-so-glorious games this season. In spite of the rebuild, fans turned out in force to cheer on their favorite team, despite the fact that the show was… non-existent! Proof, in a way, that fans have bought into the rebuild plan and the defeats that come with it, contrary to whatPatrick Huard told BPM Sports. We bought into the plan so much that, despite an unenviable place in the standings, we were the ones who filled their team’s arena seats the most, as reported by Sports Business Journal.

The CH’s closest pursuers are the Carolina Hurricanes, with an average attendance of 19,526 for the bunch of jerks. Between the Habs and the Hurricanes, that’s an average of 1,552 fewer spectators, but the Habs are a giant with feet of clay whose reign could come to an abrupt end. A rebuild Sport is the business of hope, and it makes you wonder if one day the Habs will stretch the sauce to the point where hope turns to despair. If that happens, we won’t be flocking to the big game. Already, we could see at the end of the season that the seats weren’t as full as they used to be. You could feel it too. But since tickets are sold in advance, the statistics were not affected. However, that day may not be so far off. When I saw this list, I couldn’t help but glance at the numbers for the Arizona Coyotes. They compiled an average of 4,600 spectators per game for a total attendance of 188,600. That’s 4.6 times less than the 864,180 fans who passed through the turnstiles at the Bell Centre. Just think, to match the Habs’ season, the Coyotes need almost 5! I don’t understand how such a situation is accepted by the players’ association. After all, it’s a significant amount of revenue that the league is letting slip away, and by extension, that the players don’t have access to through revenue sharing. It’s the kind of thing I’ll never understand, I guess…


In Brief

– The Habs’ best moments of the season, in 3 min 20.

– Seems like power play production would be up in the playoffs in recent years.

– And it’s all thanks to David Pastrnak!

– No doubt about it, there’s pressure in Toronto.

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