Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
Last season I was hearing that the Panthers were actually losing money faster than the arena made money, and the owners had applied to the county to renegotiate the deal so they would no longer be required to put a hockey team there.
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This is all true, but the team made it seem much worse than it actually was, and Florida residents are really stingy when it comes to paying for community projects, so it's no shock at all that it didn't happen. It was a play by ownership to try and get more money out of the community since the gates admissions weren't amazing yet.
I suspect that the team will draw better this year with someone like Jagr to market along with the young 3 of Huberdeau, Barkov, and Bjugstad....Oh yeah, and Ekblad. Last year they relied heavily on Luongo for marketing as he was the only marketable player. Now people know who Willie Mitchell is and get excited about him. It just takes longer to market the team here because most people completely wrote them off.