I love how Adrian Dater’s pet issue is tracking attendance at Avalanche games.
Yesterday he posted some ideas on how to improve attendance.
It’s interesting stuff: brighter lights around the arena; classic rock music, rather than metal; and a high definition JumboTron screen.
Dater also talked to some players about the low attendance this season, with one player [...]

Adrian Dater points out Monday’s Avs-Flames game drew just 11,448 fans.
The comments on Dater’s post are interesting. Some say attendance is low because the Avs play the same teams over and over.
Other people said it’s a marketing issue.
One poster said Avs fans are still put off by last season’s debacles.
I’m going to throw out another [...]

I know this is hardly the most important story of the day, but I have to point out Jocelyn Thibault’s goaltending consultancy gig in Colorado:
Rather than being with the team full time, as goaltending coach Jeff Hackett was the past few seasons, Thibault still lives in Montreal and is spending occasional stretches with the team [...]

Forbes released their annual NHL franchise valuations and things actually look pretty good for the league. Or at least for some of the franchises. The average operating profit was $6.1 million, aggregate income increased, as did average franchise value.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an across the board thing for the all of the franchises. While successful teams [...]

How shocking! Adrian Dater is hearing Peter Forsberg is a bit undecided about his NHL comeback. Although, this is actually a comeback from a comeback.
Dater thinks Forsberg is going to give the NHL another go once he’s extensively tested his foot.
Do they not get NHL news in Sweden? Has Forsberg not seen the laundry list [...]

Wednesday night’s Avs-Coyotes game was a Colorado record for low attendance. Adrian Dater asked fans what happened and he got back some very interesting responses.
According to Dater, a lot of fans reported ticket prices weren’t the only factor keeping them away from the Pepsi Center. Some fans reported problems with the Avs ticket office — [...]

What a crazy season.
Jeff Gordon says he’s already hearing trade chatter from certain NHL GMs, with many already thinking about giving up their season and trying to dump salary.
What separates NHL GMs from most other sports, is that NHL GMs only seem to think about salary implications after a contract is signed.
Vinny Lecavalier, under [...]

What are we? Two weeks into the season? And already the Doug Weight trade rumors are starting. This has to be some kind of trade rumor record.
The Islanders are still waiting for their first win of the season and are in a challenging situation. Coach Scott Gordon has some talented, but undeveloped forwards and uses [...]

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s still early in the season, so it’s still hard to make observations about team problems and team successes. But having said that, some interesting ideas are already starting to emerge.
Like will the Sharks play defense this season? They went down four goals to the Kings, managed to come back, but [...]

It’s corn Friday. Sorry!

Buccigross’ ‘Heatley will be a Shark’ call is just a big misunderstanding: he’s talking about an upcoming Ottawa production of WESTSIDE STORY. Also, don’t miss Jason Spezza as Maria.
The Sabres released photos of the commemorative bricks from the Aud, which they’ll be selling. So the Sabres will hold onto bricks from demolished [...]