"Soldout" or "Sellout" ?

Before I began looking at those magical 9 teams that are playing below 85 % capacity, I wanted to get something straight (and actually, NJ is now at 85.7 % - I'll still be looking at them though).

Obviously, all of the attendance figures I use are essentially the number of tickets paid for on that night. Because as I showed you with some pictures from Phoenix, there is no way some of the reported amounts from the lower-end teams are true. But, at the same time, I do believe some teams are much more truthful in their reporting of attendances than others. So I went through team by team and put them into one of three groups; Liars, truth, and the ones I cant quite put my finger on (not sure). So here's the list:

Liars

• Atlanta
• Florida
• New Jersey
• New York Rangers
• New York Islanders
• Phoenix
• Tampa Bay

To me, Atlanta, Florida, New Jersey, NYI, Phoenix, and Tampa are all in the same boat. They report the paid attendance plus any tickets they literally gave away. Although I could easily put the Rangers in the truth section on some nights, the 100 level seats are never filled during the regular season with the exception of opening and closing night, along with any retirement ceremonies.

Telling the "Truth" (two at a time to save post length)

• Boston - Buffalo
• Calgary - Chicago
• Colorado - Detroit
• Edmonton - Los Angeles
• Minnesota - Montreal
• Nashville - Ottawa
• Philadelphia - Pittsburgh
• San Jose - St. Louis
• Toronto - Vancouver
• Washington

To start, any Canadian team on here may actually have the exact number of people in their stadium for each game. Every night they all sell out or come damn near it, and every time I look I can only find one, two, or three empty seats here and there. Its awesome. The close calls on this list include Los Angeles, Nashville, Ottawa, St. Louis, and Washington. I think they are all pretty truthful and from the game photographs along with watching the games on Center Ice they seem to have the amount of people they report each night. Who else does that leave? Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Jose. These teams always draw well and show it, but when they don't sell out they actually report it. Boston and Buffalo stick out in my mind, because they are always within a couple of hundred or so but they don't seem to round it up.

Hard to tell

• Anaheim
• Carolina
• Columbus
• Dallas

On some nights when these teams report big crowds, they actually do look like big crowds from what I can tell. But when they have a Tuesday night game and they report 80% capacity, sometimes it doesn't look that way.

Either way, why did I do this? Well, its really irrelevant because if the New York Rangers have every seat sold, then more power to them! That means the marketing and sales group members are doing their job by getting the tickets sold. I mean there are advantages to lying about a sellout, I guess. An example would be to keep an historic sellout streak or to attract sponsors. But when MSG announces "another sellout" when there are blatantly hundreds of seats open in the 100 sections, what does that say about the organization?

I don't know, none of this really matters when it comes down to it because its all about just getting the tickets sold. Either way, I wanted to get this straight because of the 9 teams I mentioned before (NJ, PHO, LA, NASH, NYI, CAR, FLA, ATL, CLB), only 3 seem to be telling the truth (LA, NASH, and CAR).

Finally, this weeks statistics...

Average Crowd per game this week: 17,659. Nice.

Total Sellouts this week: 24 out of 41 total games. 59% - Great work.

We will see how big the Holiday bump ends up being after next week.

That's all for tonight, I'm on the road until tommorow afternoon, I'll wrap up tonight's stuff tommorow night.