Panthers fail to sell out Game 1, and why that’s OK

The Florida Panthers didn’t sell out Game 1 of their Eastern Conference Playoff divisional quarterfinal series against the New York Islanders. This is, without question, embarrassing. This is also, without question, understandable.

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It’s embarrassing because logic would dictate that the rarity of a home playoff game would result in a sellout, and it’s embarrassing because Panthers fans basically handed ammunition to their market’s Canadian critics and said “shoot.”

From Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:

By the way, a Canadian TV broadcast from the arena reported the crowd was about 12,000, a ludicrously low guesstimate that had Panthers general manager Dale Tallon fuming in the press box.

Poor Canada has no team in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 1970, or else that TV station might have been covering one of its own teams instead of being in South Florida. Anyway, the attendance was 17,422, credible, though surprisingly some 2,000 shy of a sellout.

(Note: Sportsnet picked by the MSG broadcast, so that was actually the Islanders' voices.)

They averaged 15,384 tickets distributed this season, the best regular-season in franchise history. That put them 24th in the league, at a 90.3 percent capacity. (Again, that’s tickets distributed, not fannies in the seats). That put them 1,000 fans per game behind Anaheim and slightly more than that behind San Jose. But no other playoff team had a lower average attedance.

It took Kevin Spacey to get them over 20,000 fans at a game this season, which incidentally was the largest crowd ever for a regular-season game for the Panthers.

Miami Herald writer George Richards said the crowd last night was one of the loudest of the season for the Panthers, and that resonated with me: As a Devils fan, I’ve been at playoff games where they didn’t sell out in the first round but the place was rocking. You don’t need 20,000 fans in the arena to have it sound like it.

(As a Devils fan, I also know the value of an opponent when it comes to teams that need some help to sell out big building. Were these the Rangers in Round 1, we’re probably not having this conversation about Sunrise.)

More from Cote:

It turns out Panthers fans, like their team, weren’t quite good enough as the playoffs began. You wait four years for another playoff shot and you can’t fill the barn?

Operative phrase: “Wait four years.”

Just like a commentator can assume they see 12,000 fans in a crowd of over 17,000, it’s easy to see a franchise that’s been around since 1993 and assume it has a significant fan base that will flock to the arena the minute playoff tickets go on sale.

And then you realize this is the fifth season since 1993 they’ve made the playoffs. And then you remember all the bad ownership and management, all the relocation rumors, all the strife about losing money. And then you remember why, despite being 23 years into their existence, the Panthers are still building a fan base.

Aaron Ekblad is in Year 2. Sasha Barkov is 20. This is Duncan Keith and Jonathan Toews: The Next Generation, and we’re not just saying this because it’s a Dale Tallon team.

In a non-traditional market, you build a fan base in a few specific ways: Through a championship, obviously, or failing that through long playoff runs, which is why The Year of the Rat is to Florida fans as the Roswell Crash is to UFOlogists; and through sustained success resulting in consistent playoff appearances.

With half the division in a rebuild or having an identity crisis, the Panthers could be a challenger for the next few years. The fans will live and die with them in the playoffs, and lifelong allegiances will be formed.

It’s happening already for Game 2 on Friday night, which we imagine will be a larger crowd that the opener.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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