3 replies to this topic

[OldBroad]

http://slapshot.blog...ain/?ref=sports


The above article (hope you can access it) appears in today's NYT Sunday Sports along with some letters from readers regarding the articles about Derek Boogaard. One of the suggestions that I find particularly interesting/appealing is to enlarge the arena (a la the Olympic and international arenas) so that the players with skill and speed are given room to outrun and out-manuever those with less of both. I find it really galling that when a team (on today's ice) can't keep up with the skill set of its opponent, it is likely to take to just running at the other team (which is what I think happened in last year's Cup finals, just my opinion, and frequently happens to the Wings)....

[YzerFan19]

I've wanted larger rinks for a long time anyway, so I'm for it. That said, I think the time for that was during the new arena explosion of the mid-90s. No way the owners will give up the seats to do it now. That said, you can always require all new arenas to be built to the international spec and grandfather in the old ones (like how Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and the Aud in Buffalo were shorter than regulation). It'll take awhile but eventually we'll get the entire league switched over.

[jwmann2]

http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/concussion-roster-quickly-expands-again/?ref=sports


The above article (hope you can access it) appears in today's NYT Sunday Sports along with some letters from readers regarding the articles about Derek Boogaard. One of the suggestions that I find particularly interesting/appealing is to enlarge the arena (a la the Olympic and international arenas) so that the players with skill and speed are given room to outrun and out-manuever those with less of both. I find it really galling that when a team (on today's ice) can't keep up with the skill set of its opponent, it is likely to take to just running at the other team (which is what I think happened in last year's Cup finals, just my opinion, and frequently happens to the Wings)....

I can agree with the article. My least favorite aspect of the game is the major traffic in the corners of five or six guys scraping at the puck. It would be tough to expand the rinks, less seats means less revenue. No way the owners would go for it.

[YzerFan19]

The funny thing is that fewer seats could actually mean more revenue, but I've never seen anyone do the math on it so we all just keep repeating the "Fewer seats, less revenue" argument.

We all say the owners won't want to lose the high-value front-row seats, but they won't actually be losing them. Just because what was the front row will be gone doesn't mean that there aren't front-row seats. What was the fourth row (or thereabouts) becomes the new front row and will be priced appropriately. And there are slightly more seats in that row in most arenas, so you actually get more front-row seats.

Because seats are priced by how far they are from the ice, not how far they are from the top of the arena, you actually lose the cheapest seats, not the most expensive ones. What I haven't seen is whether or not the increased number of front-row seats would make up for the loss of the cheapest seats.

That said, it still would be weird in most arenas because, as we saw in Salt Lake in 2002, you'd end up having front-row seats that are halfway up the glass.