"I hear you about attendance..." I know comparing across eras is especially difficult due to arena sizes having grown but I'm not sure that the low attendance numbers argument holds up. Per HockeyDB, Arizona's average attendance has been 13592, including this season at Mullet Arena. I won't argue that it's low. But there's a relocated team that averaged 14312 over its entire existence that seemingly everyone points to as a market that never should have been abandoned.
Yeah, the Quebec Nordiques averaged a grand total of 720 more people than the sad-sack Coyotes. Again, arena sizes make it difficult, Le Colisee only held in the low 15000s, so it's hard to say what the Nords would have drawn in a larger arena. However, the Nordiques never averaged a sellout in any single season, which seems to imply that they weren't regularly running out of tickets.
Maybe someone better with numbers can do more analysis than I can but my feeling is that we hold the Coyotes to a higher standard than we did the Nordiques or the Whalers.
"I hear you about attendance..." I know comparing across eras is especially difficult due to arena sizes having grown but I'm not sure that the low attendance numbers argument holds up. Per HockeyDB, Arizona's average attendance has been 13592, including this season at Mullet Arena. I won't argue that it's low. But there's a relocated team that averaged 14312 over its entire existence that seemingly everyone points to as a market that never should have been abandoned.
Yeah, the Quebec Nordiques averaged a grand total of 720 more people than the sad-sack Coyotes. Again, arena sizes make it difficult, Le Colisee only held in the low 15000s, so it's hard to say what the Nords would have drawn in a larger arena. However, the Nordiques never averaged a sellout in any single season, which seems to imply that they weren't regularly running out of tickets.
Maybe someone better with numbers can do more analysis than I can but my feeling is that we hold the Coyotes to a higher standard than we did the Nordiques or the Whalers.