Carl Sussman writes:
 
>>I may be provincial, but the newspaper coverage of this tournament far
>>exceeded what I have seen in any other town during the NCAA's.  Now
>>granted, BC being in the final had something to do with it but college
>>hockey consistently outdraws college basketball in this town year after
>>year.  It was nice to see the print media (television is hopeless) awake to
>>this fact.
>
>*Something* to do with it?  BC being in the final, and the final being in
>Boston had everything to do with it.
 
So you're saying that there would have been no interest in the tournament
if BC was not in it?  That the Fleet Center would not have been packed and
the bars and restaurants around it would have not been sold out as well?  I
have several friends who are hockey fans (not college hockey fans per se)
who keen interest in the NCAA's being in Boston, and long before the
participants were known.  They begged me to find a way for them to get
tickets.  I doubt if my experience was unique.
 
>Boston is the most provinical large
>city I've ever visited.  Nothing happens unless it happens here.  This is
>the only place where you'll see headlines reading "20 People Killed in
>Tornado in  Illinois; No One in Boston Hurt."  Every national news story is
>followed by a story about the "Boston connection," which is often so
>attenuated as to be absurd.
 
Geez, I've been reading the Boston papers all my life and I have yet to see
a headline like that.  Maybe "Tornado in Illinois, No One FROM Boston
Hurt."  After all the first rule of newspaper journalism is the local
angle.  Go back and read the Albany Times Union or Cincinnati Inquirer and
then tell me that the Boston press fell down on the job.
 
>As for the support for hockey, maybe it's good for college hockey (but I
>doubt it, I hardly read or hear anything about college hockey in the Boston
>media), but it's laughable for the pros.  According to the April 10, 1998
>edition of The Hockey News, attendance for Bruins games to date this season
>has been 82%.  That's 5 percent *lower* than last year, when the team was
>arguably the worst in the NHL.  Only Carolina (41% !!!), Los Angeles (78%),
>NY Islanders (74%), Tampa Bay (68%), and Washington (78%) had lower
>attendance figures.  Now, Carolina's problems are obvious, Los Angeles has
>notoriously bad fans (although the Ducks average 99%, go figure), the
>Islanders are an abomination, Tampa Bay is the worst team I've ever seen
>(and what a hideous sweater), and Washington. . .well, that's difficult to
>explain -- good team, great sweaters, I guess their fans just suck.  At any
>rate, it's not very good company for Boston.
>
>In contrast, Detroit, which actually calls itself "Hovkeytown," has an
>average attendance of 100%, despite the higher ticket prices already
>mentioned by someone else.  For the curious, the other teams to average
>100% attendance are: Colorado, Florida (!!), NY Rangers (Go Rangers!),
>Philadelphia, and Toronto.  Incidentally, can you believe Montreal doesn't
>average 100% attendance (it is close -- 97%)?
>
>I would also note that thi gives Boston lower attendance than any of the
>other original six teams, and only Chicago (86%) is close.
 
My comment re:  college hockey was a comparison to support for college
basketball in this area.  College hockey consistently outdraws college
basketball in this area, it is only the myopic sportswriters and
newscasters who think that squeakball is the only winter game that counts.
 
As for pro hockey, who cares?  If the criteria for being a hockey town is
attendance at an overpriced, go through the motions, neutral zone trap pro
game, I will gladly have the towns you cited take the honors.
 
Greg Ambrose
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.