Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Wow, this is nice having so much insight and effort from our farm team fans. The Omaha guys didn't even give us so much as a whisper on Calgarypuck last season.
I still haven't read a post-game though where the attendance was over 3000, it's always an excuse about the weather or other sports or a long-weekend or something.
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The attendance thing is a dilemna....QC had a UHL team in here that did some remarkable things, including 6 consecutive 50-win seasons (we're in the HHOF for that one, among others) and some consecutive cups won in the early years. Fans here became accustomed to having a winning team, usually topping the league and contending in the playoffs.
During the last few years, things got progressively worse in the UHL and the team, going through a re-building process, faltered. Made the playoffs, but never did as well as fans expected them to. So fans took their entertainment dollars elsewhere....and Mallard attendance dropped.
The owners, all locals, knew that something had to be done and believe that the jump to the AHL was the only feasible option. Fans aren't going to come storming back immediately....it's going to take time. I just checked. Out of 22 home games so far, only five have had attendance under 3,000 and five have had attendance over 3,500. So the potential is there....but a record of 18-17-2-5 for a total of just 42 points and 7th place in an 8-team division certainly doesn't help.
What also doesn't help is negative comments from rather bitter Omaha fans in our local paper earlier in the season. I know that it isn't all Omaha fans because we've met some really great ones, but as recently as last week at the game in Iowa, QC fans were confronted by angry Omaha fans who felt QC had "stolen" their team. The fans had nothing to do with any of this....
We're currently averaging 3,363 fans/game with this just-over-.500 team. In their first year in Omaha, the Knights had a team which finished 6th in a 7-team division and ended up with 84 points and an average of 3,271 fans. Last season, the Omaha team ended up on top of the division with a record of 49-25-0-5-1 and 104 points. But they still managed to only draw an average of 3,543 fans. I know that our ownership wants to increase attendance and I'm confident that by the end of the season we'll be doing at least as well as Omaha did last year....without the first-place team.