As a Badger season ticket holder the answer is yes & no. With the
move to an on campus site more students than ever now attend badger
hockey games. Since Coach Eaves took over the program we have seen an
increase of season ticket holders. It should be noted that most have
a Friday series or a Saturday series ticket plan & not both nights.
We average over 10,000 each night so the fans are there. But.......

As the hockey team drifted the past 6-8 years, Badger Basketball has
been driving every year to the NCAA's drawing off some of the
traveling fans. Newer hockey fans were not around in 1990 to see our
last hockey championship.

The older fan base does travel. This will be my 13th final four. But
as a rule I don't go to the WCHA Final Five and go to the NCAA
regional (Midwest or West) instead. As the Badgers improve and as
they begin to drive deeper into post season play my bet is that a
large part of the fan base will follow anywhere, anyplace.

Jay


At 3:01 PM -0500 4/4/05, Erik Biever wrote:
>I'm curious about the assumption of a rabid Wisconsin fan base.  Does it still
>exist?  Not to take a shot at Wisconsin, but they haven't been to a
>Frozen Four
>in a while, so we don't know what attendance would be like if Bucky
>were there.
>  Wisconsin fans regularly attend the WCHA Final Five, but haven't outnumbered
>the North Dakota fans.  Badger fan attendance at the 2000 West Regional at
>Mariucci was good but not extraordinary.  Did they show up in huge numbers in
>Grand Rapids this year?
>
>-- Erik


--
Jay Punwar
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Madison, WI
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