Right. When I want to look up particular stats, my search terms include ‘hockeydb’ more often than ‘nhl’.
In any case, the viability of an NHL franchise is not determined by the number of people who search for hockey on Google, but by the number who are willing to pony up several grand a year for season tickets.
U.S. teams can flourish with a small population of ‘avid’ fans, in part because of demographics. Hockey may only appeal to 5 percent of the population there, but a large part of that group are affluent and willing to spend. The game appeals to the same demographic group here, but also to enormous numbers of blue-collar people who can't afford tickets.
Joe Sixpack (U.S. edition) has barely heard of hockey, whereas Joe Hoser and J.-S. Poutine yak about it all winter, but all three of them spend approximately the same amount of money on the game. From the NHL's point of view, how ‘avid’ those folks are means very little.
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