[dobbles]

personally i don't see them leaving yet. i believe the agreement with local ownership is for 3 years after this one. not sure of any penalty the flames would incur for leaving the deal early.

personally, i think the biggest problem is attendance. until the team can make money, we will always have to worry about losing the team. additionally, if we can show we are a viable market, if the flames do leave, we as a community will hopefully be able to pick up another affiliation. getting more people in the door is a complicated issue. we have discussed many a things amongst us fans, but a perfect solution is not something thats just gonna happen.

one of the parts however is the success of the team on the ice. some qc fans think the only way to get fans back is to put together a bunch of championship runs as thats what packed in the fans in the 90's. as someone who wasn't around for that, i can't totally dismiss it, but to me i think thats somewhat of an overstatement. i think their past success was due to the newness of hockey. the fact that the team was so good added to it, but wasn't the driving factor. so yes i do think that having a successful team will help, but not totally integral.

so far the team has been pretty hohum. the hardest part is not that they don't win every night, but they often look like an echl team... the PP regularly looks like a PK unit, and we can go games without any sort of scoring touch. part of me does think it kind of aligns with sutter liking those hard working canadian boys that aren't necessarily great scorers. a lot of people say we are too dedicated to development and don't have veteran ringers like other teams. i personally don't feel that way as last year we had stevenson and kolanos, and this year we have lundmark, eriksson, and vandermeer. i just think at this point we don't have enough players with enough skill to be a top team. that can change overnight in the ahl though as new prospects arrive and old ones leave. i think its a combination of not having those offensive minded guys and others just not playing up to expectations. as fans, we like to think that every prospect is on his way to the big club, but sometimes they just don't pan out...

in summary, i think the team will be here at least another year unless local owners are losing too much money. we could use more fans but there is no magic solution. a winning team is part of that. but right now we just don't have the parts to win a championship