That's because Wirtz thought it was still 1955.

_________________

I saw him once at Northbrook Court and he was wearing a fur coat from the 50s. That fucker was shedding all over. And he drove an old Benz that looked like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I'll give you that. Tallest midget award though.

_________________
CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

The Hawks absurd TV policy cost them a generation of fans. What was the old saying "There are 19,000 hockey fans and they all go to the games." I don't think this saying was that far off the mark.

I remember going to the 1st game of the Campbell Conference finals in 1992 with my dad and brother. We arrived two hours before the game to buy tickets at the Stadium office expecting only standing room tickets to be available. Instead we were able to buy three seats in the upper deck. Can't imagine doing that for the Hawks/Ducks this year.

Even when the UC first open I remember tickets being available for a second round playoff game against the Avalanche in '96.

If Wirtz had the foresight to to put at least playoff games on TV starting the late 80's, the Hawk fan base would have grown substantially. Those playoff teams back then were exciting.

Instead the Hawks never grew their fan base and then when the Hawks decided to move popular players like Roenick for Alexi Zhamnov....or a Hall of Fame goalie in Belfour for Ulf Dahlen, michael Sykora and Chris Terreri even the diehards couldn't take it anymore. I believe the Hawks now have a fan base where when they do eventually become average I don't think the UC will become a morgue.

It's a morgue when they're down a goal in the third.

_________________

The Wirtz family's shortsighted television notions aside, no grown man should be wearing the jersey of their team. Ever. At any point. Laurence Holmes also thinks so and that makes it true.

_________________
Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

I was at Chelios' last game as a Blackhawk (I had no idea that was going to be the case, of course) ... button 48.

_________________
Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

I'm guessing that's been kicked around here a bunch, but it's the first I've heard of Laurence saying that.....really?

_________________

That's good.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

I see red there.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

That's not true. Most of us didn't go because we were boycotting the owner.

As soon as Bill Wirtz died, I along with many others packed the building for the very next game.

_________________

What shakes said.
After I went to a real stinker of a game in 2002 and paid a bundle I swore I wouldn't spend another dime until the old fart blew his last gut.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Cuz Virgina McCaskey, Donald Sterling, Jerry Reinsdorf, Sam Zell, the Ricketts, Marge Schott et al are such amazing public citizens.

ain't nobody boycotting any sport wholesale cuz the owner of the local professional franchise is a douchebag.

Even if Hitler owned their pro franchise, people still play basketball in LA and Chicago, people still play baseball on the North and South sides of Chicago, people still have their kids play high school and peewee football around Chicago despite the Bears having shite owners.

Chicago was not a hockey town for more reasons than people didn't care enough to watch a losing NHL team. Ask the folks at Mcfetridge and Johnny's the difference between now and 7 years ago in terms of the level of interest in ice hockey. Heck, go to the yelp reviews for mcfeteridge, it's all "I lived near this place for a decade and never knew their was an ice rink inside until... 2013/2014" yadda.

Last time Illinois had a college team in the CCHA was 1996, UofI Chicago. They dropped their hockey program that year. Alabama has more Division I college ice hockey teams than Illinois.

And Illinois, the 5th largest state, only produces 1/4th as many NHL players as either Minnesota and Michigan, both much smaller states in terms of population.

Great that Illinois and Chicago is finally catching on to hockey; premature to be shite-tawking another city's interest in hockey.

The Wolves had great attendance, at least by IHL/AHL standards, in the throes of the Hawks' dark age, so hockey fans in the area were at least watching. I can't argue that participation has always been low in Illinois. We've never had the high school leagues that Minnesota and Michigan have. I'm not sure how much we can pin that on the Blackhawks -- if anything, the strength of Minnesota prep hockey was part of the North Stars' undoing.

But yeah, every good hockey city in America has had a big downturn except Philadelphia. It's hard to support every sport all the time and hockey is the first to go.

EDIT: except Philly, obviously, where it's always been easy to stop giving a crap about the 76ers.

_________________

People are starting to notice that Illinois doesn't have non-club NCAA Div I Hockey. UIC Flames upgrading their club team back to varsity hockey and joining the WCHA makes the most sense. UIC Pavilion being an el stop from the UC.


Bolts head coach Jon Cooper got his start coaching high school hockey in Michigan:

Also, for what little it's worth, it was never about Bill Wirtz being a bad person*, but rather his effort to make sure the Blackhawks would never be competitive or accessible. That the NFL's rogues' gallery of shithead owners is boycott-proof is just a function of football being so much bigger than hockey. The last successful NFL boycott was when Memphis ran the Oilers out of town a year ahead of schedule. That barely counts for anything.

*Much like Reinsdorf, most people had very kind words for the man as a person if not as a businessman. Rocky would probably not be one of those people; an old profile from Chicago magazine details the time Dollar Bill kicked Rocky out of his own birthday party at the Chicago Stadium:


NCAA hockey is growing fast, faster than I'd like, and I won't be surprised if Northwestern or U of I gets in on it eventually.

_________________

I can't see either adding a men's sport and the scholarships and money that would have to go with it. Along witht the matching women's scholarships. Big step up for their club status.

_________________

The smart thing would be for the Blackhawks and Blues to go halfsies on funding a program at C-U (Penn State's new program is funded almost entirely by the Sabres' owner), thereby fortifying support in the downstate battlefield between Chicago and St. Louis, but the Blues are so fuckin' broke they couldn't even afford to run their farm team in Peoria anymore. Owning the Blues is a license to lose money for some reason.

_________________

Well the Blackhawks lose money according to the owner too

_________________

The Blackhawks haven't had to hock an AHL team to cover operating expenses. That's desperate.

_________________

A year old, but it'll have to do until new numbers come in: registered hockey players by state. I have taken two minutes in Excel to rank them in descending order:

1 - Minnesota - 54507
2 - Michigan - 50585
3 - New York - 48354
4 - Massachusetts - 48074
5 - Pennsylvania - 30529
6 - Illinois - 29977
7 - California - 25288
8 - New Jersey - 18438
9 - Wisconsin - 17762
10 - Ohio - 14387
11 - Colorado - 13570
12 - Connecticut - 13275
13 - Texas - 12909
14 - Florida - 11982
15 - Virginia - 9351
16 - Maryland - 9122
17 - Alaska - 8469
18 - Washington - 8369
19 - Missouri - 7162
20 - Maine - 6526
21 - New Hampshire - 6211
22 - North Carolina - 6180
23 - Indiana - 5922
24 - North Dakota - 5387
25 - Arizona - 4860
26 - Vermont - 4756
27 - Rhode Island - 4621
28 - Utah - 4421
29 - Montana - 4253
30 - Idaho - 3396
31 - Iowa - 3378
32 - Tennessee - 2938
33 - South Dakota - 2788
34 - Oregon - 2148
35 - Georgia - 2095
36 - Wyoming - 1925
37 - Nebraska - 1693
38 - Kansas - 1648
39 - Kentucky - 1625
40 - South Carolina - 1619
41 - New Mexico - 1298
42 - Nevada - 1244
43 - Alabama - 1236
44 - West Virginia - 1147
45 - District of Columbia - 1113
46 - Delaware - 915
47 - Oklahoma - 738
48 - Louisiana - 425
49 - Arkansas - 359
50 - Mississippi - 223
51 - Hawaii - 19

States with an NHL team are in bold, plus Maryland and Virginia since counting DC by itself wouldn't really be fair.

If you clicked the link, you noticed the proviso that Minnesota high school hockey isn't registered with USA Hockey, so the number of people playing hockey in Minnesota is even higher. I don't know what the numbers were like several years ago, but all things considered, Illinois could be doing much worse than 6th in the nation. New York and the three Ms aren't going down, and Pennsylvania was in striking distance. I'm surprised Montana is so high. There must be a lot of ringers down from Calgary.

Also, it's funny how the list of registered hockey players has a rather positive correlation with places that seem nice to live, other than Hawaii at the bottom and Pennsyltucky at the top.

_________________

I would love to know the expenses for Illinois Hockey Players compared to Minnesota and Michigan. With the lack of facilities compared to demand, I know it cost a few thousand dollars a year just to play on a high school hockey team.

_________________

Let's hear it for Wisconsin cracking the top ten without an NHL team of its own, though they do have a highly successful college team. Still pretty impressive. And to think the NHL is farting around in Tennessee instead.

Here's how they stack up per capita:
1 - Alaska (come on this isn't even fair)
2 - Minnesota
3 - Vermont
4 - North Dakota
5 - Massachusetts
6 - Michigan
7 - Maine
8 - New Hampshire
9 - Rhode Island
10 - Montana
11 - Connecticut
12 - Wyoming
13 - South Dakota
14 - Wisconsin
15 - Colorado
16 - New York
17 - Pennsylvania
18 - Illinois
19 - New Jersey
20 - Idaho
21 - District of Columbia
22 - Maryland
23 - Utah
24 - Ohio
25 - Washington
26 - Missouri
27 - Virginia
28 - Iowa
29 - Delaware
30 - Nebraska
31 - Indiana
32 - Arizona
33 - California
34 - New Mexico
35 - North Carolina
36 - West Virginia
37 - Florida
38 - Kansas
39 - Oregon
40 - Texas
41 - Tennessee
42 - Nevada
43 - Kentucky
44 - South Carolina
45 - Alabama
46 - Georgia
47 - Oklahoma
48 - Arkansas
49 - Louisiana
50 - Mississippi
51 - Hawaii

_________________

Speak of the devil! http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/docu ... eports.pdf

Percentage lost or gained from last year in the third column.

1 • Minnesota • 55450 • 1.73%
2 • Michigan • 50602 • 0.03%
3 • Massachusetts • 49591 • 3.16%
4 • New York • 48580 • 0.47%
5 • Illinois • 30553 • 1.92%
6 • Pennsylvania* • 30078 • -1.48%
7 • California • 26383 • 4.33%
8 • New Jersey • 18753 • 1.71%
9 • Wisconsin • 17917 • 0.87%
10 • Ohio • 14735 • 2.42%
11 • Colorado • 13652 • 0.60%
12 • Texas • 13500 • 4.58%
13 • Connecticut • 13414 • 1.05%
14 • Florida • 12505 • 4.36%
15 • Virginia • 10063 • 7.61%
16 • Maryland • 9607 • 5.32%
17 • Alaska • 8788 • 3.77%
18 • Washington • 8594 • 2.69%
19 • Arizona • 7329 • 50.80%
20 • Missouri • 7082 • -1.12%
21 • North Carolina • 6677 • 8.04%
22 • Maine • 6440 • -1.32%
23 • New Hampshire • 6252 • 0.66%
24 • Indiana • 6185 • 4.44%
25 • North Dakota • 5832 • 8.26%
26 • Vermont • 4538 • -4.58%
27 • Rhode Island • 4532 • -1.93%
28 • Montana • 4469 • 5.08%
29 • Utah • 4138 • -6.40%
30 • Iowa • 3638 • 7.70%
31 • Idaho • 3459 • 1.86%
32 • Tennessee • 3449 • 17.39%
33 • South Dakota • 2868 • 2.87%
34 • Oregon • 2566 • 19.46%
35 • South Carolina • 2091 • 29.15%
36 • Wyoming • 2080 • 8.05%
37 • Georgia • 2043 • -2.48%
38 • Nebraska • 1839 • 8.62%
39 • Kansas • 1636 • -0.73%
40 • Kentucky • 1623 • -0.12%
41 • Alabama • 1497 • 21.12%
42 • New Mexico • 1418 • 9.24%
43 • Nevada • 1358 • 9.16%
44 • West Virginia • 1159 • 1.05%
45 • Oklahoma • 1143 • 54.88%
46 • District of Columbia • 1117 • 0.36%
47 • Delaware • 962 • 5.14%
48 • Arkansas • 404 • 12.53%
49 • Louisiana • 394 • -7.29%
50 • Mississippi • 174 • -21.97%
51 • Hawaii • 15 • -21.05%

*USA Hockey divides Pennsylvania into Western PA, grouped with Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia for some arcane regional system I don't care to understand, and Eastern PA, grouped with Delaware and Jersey. 12,945 on Pittsburgh's side of the state, 17,133 on the Philly side. I don't know where the dividing line is and I don't care.

Oklahoma has the biggest percentage gain, but only a net gain of 405, so who gives a fuck, really. But Arizona added nearly 2,500 registered players from last year. The Coyotes are never moving now. What's worse is what's going on in dear old New England: Connecticut and New Hampshire saw only small gains, while Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont lost players. As a region, numbers went up, but only because of major growth in MA.

The DMV, taken as one state (c'mon, Virginia hockey players aren't coming out of Norfolk), would be at 20,787. Affluent white suburbs + Ovechkin = much hockey.

Illinois registration is up 576 players from last year, may one of them grow up to be a Blackhawk.

_________________