Atlantic City-ECAC hockey attendance fiasco

[Rosey]

I don't see what is so bad about Albany. The first year it was there, the league went out of their way to make it feel like a festive atmosphere, blocking off the road in front of the Knick, bringing in street vendors, etc. I remember it was a great time! As the years went by, there was less and less of that, which to me says they weren't putting in enough effort. If the league wants to make the event a success, they need to put in more effort at making it a festival atmosphere.

I mean, what the fuck else is going on in Albany on the weekend? Nothing! The place clears out at 4pm on Fridays because it's the seat of NY state government and the government shuts down for the weekend. Rather than looking at this as a downside, take advantage of the vacuum for local businesses like my buddy's metal festival (ProgPowerUSA) does for the otherwise-dead midtown Atlanta area every September. Make agreements with local venues and vendors to provide stuff to do during the day. Get Jillians to put together some deals for watching hoops, or shooting pool, or playing video games. Tell Albany Pump Station in advance that there will be a bunch of beer-guzzling, red-clad meatheads coming to town in search of decent beer. Bring some interesting music to the Cajun joint. Organize some outdoor event on the Hudson waterfront park. Put together an amateur hockey tournament to take place at the TUC during the day before the games. (That would be awesome! I would totally do that.) (Edit follows.) Get one of the hotels in the area to be the "official" tournament hotel, block off the *entire thing* a year in advance for ECAC attendees only at low rates, and make the place party central.

This kind of weekend sounds so fun that, even if Cornell didn't make it, I would be inclined to go anyway!

If you're not willing to subject the fans to the expense of NYC for fear of reducing turnout even further, the best of the remaining bad choices is Albany. Under that circumstance, make lemonade!

[ftyuv]

What if they held the ECAC tournament over a series of a few weeks, 7 minutes at a time, between periods at Bruins games?

::bolt::

[abbottfan]

I don't see what is so bad about Albany. The first year it was there, the league went out of their way to make it feel like a festive atmosphere, blocking off the road in front of the Knick, bringing in street vendors, etc. I remember it was a great time! As the years went by, there was less and less of that, which to me says they weren't putting in enough effort. If the league wants to make the event a success, they need to put in more effort at making it a festival atmosphere.

I mean, what the fuck else is going on in Albany on the weekend? Nothing! The place clears out at 4pm on Fridays because it's the seat of NY state government and the government shuts down for the weekend. Rather than looking at this as a downside, take advantage of the vacuum for local businesses like my buddy's metal festival (ProgPowerUSA) does for the otherwise-dead midtown Atlanta area every September. Make agreements with local venues and vendors to provide stuff to do during the day. Get Jillians to put together some deals for watching hoops, or shooting pool, or playing video games. Tell Albany Pump Station in advance that there will be a bunch of beer-guzzling, red-clad meatheads coming to town in search of decent beer. Bring some interesting music to the Cajun joint. Organize some outdoor event on the Hudson waterfront park. Put together an amateur hockey tournament to take place at the TUC during the day before the games. (That would be awesome! I would totally do that.)

If you're not willing to subject the fans to the expense of NYC for fear of reducing turnout even further, the best of the remaining bad choices is Albany. Under that circumstance, make lemonade!

I also liked Albany. I remember in '03 and '05 there was a lot going on right near the game, and they had a huge banner across the street. However, I also remember how lame it was in '09 when all they did was put a couple of kids games inside the building.
The main thing about Albany that I liked was that we had lots of fans everywhere you went, and even though there wasn't much to do it was still a fun weekend.

[Jim Hyla]

I'll say this ... it's not 1970 anymore.  It's not even 1990 anymore.  A tournament in Boston would work as poorly as anywhere else, I'm completely convinced.

First ... ECAC programs are just not on a par -- in general -- with Hockey East programs anymore.  In 1990 -- the last year an ECAC team made the finals -- they were.  So no one in Boston is going to be that interested going to see "lower level" hockey.  They can just save their money and buy the Hockey East and Regional tickets.  That's just the way it is.

Second ... fan bases in general for all ECAC schools are much smaller than other schools. The undergrad sizes are much smaller, and therefore the amount of grads are smaller.  This is just the nature of the beast, and thus, there is only so much they can do.

Third ... I don't believe people from Potsdam, for example, would be passionate enough to drive to Boston anymore ... or much of anywhere else for that matter. Things have changed all over.  And it's not just because the team isn't great currently.  Even Cornell's fan base, though still relatively great, is not as passionate anymore.  Reasons for this could be debated forever.

Fourth ... the only way to get Yale fans to show up in great numbers, apparently, is to have the tournament at Ingalls Rink.  Great atmosphere there, but they don't travel anywhere.  Let's hope they at least travel the 20 miles to Bridgeport.

Fifth ... I'm not defending AC - but there really is no good solution for the ECAC.  Anyone who believes there is one great answer out there, is dreaming.  This is the dilemma which the ECAC faces.  This is why they tried AC.  I agree with Greg on its charms, but I agree with others on its problems.  I'd rather have it somewhere else -- a place that is simply a nice, modern hockey arena (like Bridgeport) -- not an old dump of any kind.

Sixth ... No one loves Lake Placid more than me.  If they played in front of crickets, it would still be worth it -- except for one thing: the Olympic-size ice sheet.  It doesn't help in prep for the NCAA Tournament, and coaches don't want it.  If there was some way to rectify that, at least temporarily, it would be great.

Surprise, I know it's not 1990 anymore, I probably know it more than most. So you know it's not going to work there more than anywhere else?

I'm not looking for HE fans to come. I'm looking for  good place for us travelers to go to, and where some local grads would come out to see it. I don't expect to fill the Garden.

If Potsdam fans aren't willing to travel it doesn't matter where you have it, and that doesn't make Boston any worse than anywhere else.

I don't really care about Yale fans, but I bet we'd get more in Boston than AC.

So don't defend AC. If there's no good solution, again that doesn't make Boston a bad solution.

I disliked LP, mainly for the reasons Greg (I think) stated. I don't want to pay for a hotel if I won't use it. And who cares we're not going back there anyway.

So, you don't think Boston would work, but all your points, except HE, apply to all venues, not just Boston. As I said, if Boston is no worse, we ought to at least think about it. Maybe it would be as bad as AC, but I doubt it.

[Trotsky]

I disliked LP, mainly for the reasons Greg (I think) stated. I don't want to pay for a hotel if I won't use it. And who cares we're not going back there anyway.

Wasn't me, the LP CoC is paying me to lobby for them.  

There was a post on the USCHO thread with this same topic that LP had a strong offer this last round of bids -- no idea whether the post was credible.

What it appears to all boil down to is: Albany's central location and their relative lack of ineptitude makes them the baseline choice absent some more compelling argument (like, say, having a soul and preferring LP).

[CowbellGuy]

I don't see what is so bad about Albany. The first year it was there, the league went out of their way to make it feel like a festive atmosphere, blocking off the road in front of the Knick, bringing in street vendors, etc. I remember it was a great time! As the years went by, there was less and less of that, which to me says they weren't putting in enough effort. If the league wants to make the event a success, they need to put in more effort at making it a festival atmosphere.

That was all the arena's doing (and subsequent not-doing), not the league.

[Rosey]

I don't see what is so bad about Albany. The first year it was there, the league went out of their way to make it feel like a festive atmosphere, blocking off the road in front of the Knick, bringing in street vendors, etc. I remember it was a great time! As the years went by, there was less and less of that, which to me says they weren't putting in enough effort. If the league wants to make the event a success, they need to put in more effort at making it a festival atmosphere.

That was all the arena's doing (and subsequent not-doing), not the league.

I get the feeling that the league brass are even bigger jokers than I previously thought. They want this thing to be a success, but without putting any effort into making it so? ::screwy::

[billhoward]

We have a place 10 miles outside Lake Placid and all year long, virtually every weekend, we see vacancy signs at lots of hotels and motels. So I don't think the can't-cancel-less-than-a-week-in-advance problem is really a problem. The LP region's real hotel problem is too many run down, old hotel / motel rooms. It's slowly changing. There's a Marriott Courtyard added I believe after the ECACs decamped.

If we do go back and if we lose to a Yale-like team again up in LP, we can't start the thread afresh or simply repost the old complaints about how playing on Olympic ice is unfair to Cornell.

Does the ECAC have bunglers running the show? Or did Albany have a sense of where ECAC attendance was headed and opted not to offer as many incentives as they did when getting the ECACs out of LP? It may be the ECAC's options were limited. Now AC sees what the attendance is like - and imagine if we lost game 3 in Ithaca and Cornell didn't get to AC - and maybe they won't make much of an offer for an extension of the original 2 or 3 year deal.

[dbilmes]

Now that I've had a few days to recover from my trip to Atlantic City, I realize that AC does have its positive points, especially compared to Albany:
1) You can buy much better salt water taffy in AC
2) The Atlantic Ocean is more impressive to look at than the Hudson River (at least as it goes through Albany)
3) It was nice to see billboards on the Jersey Turnpike and the AC Expressway with large photos of celebrating Cornell hockey players (I'm afraid our players won't be on those billboards next year, though)
4) The price of gas is much cheaper in NJ than it is in CT (where I live)
5) At least we didn't have to listen to awful canned music played at deafening levels on the PA during stoppages in play, between games, etc. This gave the Cornell pep band plenty of air time on Friday night and both the Yale and Cornell bands plenty of air time on Saturday night. On Friday night, the PA announcer even asked the crowd (if you can call it that) to give a round of applause to the Cornell pep band in appreciation of "doing a great job."

Even so, I'd still prefer traveling to Albany for the ECACs.

[Trotsky]

There were also a lot more pretty girls in AC than Albany or in fact any other ECAC tourney or home site owing to its relative removal from the genetic sinkhole that is the northeast (with an obvious exemption for all Cornell women who are naturally beautiful).

[Jim Hyla]

We have a place 10 miles outside Lake Placid and all year long, virtually every weekend, we see vacancy signs at lots of hotels and motels. So I don't think the can't-cancel-less-than-a-week-in-advance problem is really a problem. The LP region's real hotel problem is too many run down, old hotel / motel rooms. It's slowly changing. There's a Marriott Courtyard added I believe after the ECACs decamped.

If we do go back and if we lose to a Yale-like team again up in LP, we can't start the thread afresh or simply repost the old complaints about how playing on Olympic ice is unfair to Cornell.

Does the ECAC have bunglers running the show? Or did Albany have a sense of where ECAC attendance was headed and opted not to offer as many incentives as they did when getting the ECACs out of LP? It may be the ECAC's options were limited. Now AC sees what the attendance is like - and imagine if we lost game 3 in Ithaca and Cornell didn't get to AC - and maybe they won't make much of an offer for an extension of the original 2 or 3 year deal.

I don't know about now, but back when we were going, you had to cancel 1 week ahead. Now we were regular attendees then, but if it were now and we were not in it, I wouldn't go. I'm not that interested in a B & B, but rather a hotel in "downtown" LP, where I can eat, drink and be merry. Outside of LP I'd ski Whiteface, but staying downtown is fine for that.

[adamw]

So, you don't think Boston would work, but all your points, except HE, apply to all venues, not just Boston. As I said, if Boston is no worse, we ought to at least think about it. Maybe it would be as bad as AC, but I doubt it.

Yes, you're right, they apply to all venues ... except it's a heckuva lot more expensive to rent out the "Garden" these days than any of the other locations.

Also - I was reacting to the waxing poetic of the annual pilgrimage to Boston - which seemed to be brought up as if to say it would be the same thing.

Back then, none of this stuff was on TV either - another point to consider.

[Jim Hyla]

So, you don't think Boston would work, but all your points, except HE, apply to all venues, not just Boston. As I said, if Boston is no worse, we ought to at least think about it. Maybe it would be as bad as AC, but I doubt it.

Yes, you're right, they apply to all venues ... except it's a heckuva lot more expensive to rent out the "Garden" these days than any of the other locations.

Also - I was reacting to the waxing poetic of the annual pilgrimage to Boston - which seemed to be brought up as if to say it would be the same thing.

Back then, none of this stuff was on TV either - another point to consider.

Not the same thing, but we do have some of the same sensation when traveling to the Harvard game. On many a time I've met CU fans on a rest stop on the Thruway and we've talked about the excitement of getting to the game. No, I'll never again have the same feeling of walking the long curved incline from Causeway Street up to the Garden, anticipating the game with every step, but that doesn't mean we can't find a better experience for hockey than AC.

Yes expense is a problem, and I certainly don't know any of the particulars, and probably never will. Without that info I can still dream as large as I want to. The day I stop dreaming, you might as well kiss me good-by.

[adamw]

Don't let me smash your dreams Jim

[scoop85]

There were also a lot more pretty girls in AC than Albany or in fact any other ECAC tourney or home site owing to its relative removal from the genetic sinkhole that is the northeast (with an obvious exemption for all Cornell women who are naturally beautiful).

Frankly, most of the people I saw in AC seemed like the dregs of society