Skyline_BNR34 wrote:
What list did you use for the income, with metropolitan ares, the list is different, except with The Hurricanes, and the Islanders, unless you did cities only, which you must have done.
And the thing with Greensboro, is no one wanted to buy the seats because they knew the team was going to move to Raleigh in two years anyways.
Honestly, would you buy season tickets to a team that you knew was just going to move 1.5 hours down the highway in two years?
You have to remember, even with the team in Greensboro they would have done perfectly fine.
"Both the original Generals and Monarchs are considered to this day as one of the first southern hockey franchises to build a loyal fan base and draw consistent attendance at their games."
Their ECHL teams did fine also.
"Unfortunately, the ESA would not be complete for two more years, and the only other hockey building in the Triangle was Dorton Arena, a 5,100-seat, 45-year-old building which was totally unsuitable for NHL hockey. The Hurricanes were thus forced to play home games in Greensboro, ninety minutes away from Raleigh, for their first two seasons after the move. This choice was disastrous for the franchise's attendance and reputation. With a capacity of over 21,000 people for hockey, the Greensboro Coliseum became the highest-capacity arena in the NHL, but Triangle-area fans proved unwilling to make the drive down I-40 to Greensboro, and fans from the Piedmont Triad mostly refused to support a lame-duck team that had displaced the longtime Greensboro/Carolina Monarchs minor-league franchise. Furthermore, only 29 out of 82 games were televised, and radio play-by-play coverage on WPTF was often pre-empted by North Carolina State Wolfpack basketball (for whose broadcasts WPTF was the flagship station), leaving these games totally unavailable to those who did not have a ticket. With attendance routinely well below the league average, Sports Illustrated ran a story titled "Natural Disaster,"[1] and ESPN anchors mocked the "Green Acres" of empty seats; in a 2006 interview, Karmanos admitted that "as it turns out, [Greensboro] was probably a mistake."
Those two years really should be thrown out of it, because it was not a very good choice to go to Greensboro for two years.
Right, which is why I mentioned it as a "to be fair" clause.
I don't think you can say that the team would have done fine in Greensboro and then go to talk about what a mistake it was (via the wiki article) and how those years should be thrown out.
Either way, even playing at 35,000 seat Tropicana field for two years, and filling to half capacity, the Lightning did alright.
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