April Yields Best Attendance for NHL

With one more long day to go before the fight for the toughest championship in sports begins, I wanted to update as many graphs as I could with the final attendance statistics. First, what the title describes, the NHL average attendance by month (click to enlarge):



Granted, April clearly had the least amount of games, but at the same time it was a good measuring stick for playoff tickets. The max number of games the NHL playoffs could complete (7 game series for every match up each round) is 105. With April having a great average at around an accurate number of games the playoffs might represent, I think playoff ticket sales will be fine this year.

Now, the NHL average capacity (click to enlarge):



Much of the same here, as an average NHL game in the month of April enjoyed a 97% capacity crowd.

Next, the NHL average attendance by "Round" (click to enlarge):



I anticipated the spike back to a near-league sellout for the final weekend of games, and it happened. What this graph tells us is that basically average attendance will always rise over a successfully financial season. Say I run the same graph next year, and the attendance is flat, I think then there is serious cause for concern.

Finally, lets take a look at the final Second Half Boost Numbers. First the average attendances:


Colorado is at -2% and should be in red, my bad.

Then the average capacity percentages:



As much as Carolina, L.A., and Columbus are the success stories of the second half, I'm more interested in the bottom of the list. Tampa Bay, St. Louis, and Ottawa all gained ground after falling heavily in the beginning of the second half. What this means to me is that there are hockey fans who will support the game just as much as they support their selective teams. I was very please to see Tampa Bay make such a large jump in the past two weeks considering they have been out of the playoff race since basically February.

I might have some division statistics later, but I'm not sure because of some school work. Like I said before, I'm getting into crunch time for school, so please excuse my absences until May 1. Then its all summer. Thanks for reading as always.