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Thursday, October 28, 1999
Habs slumping at the gate and on ice
MONTREAL (CP) -- The empty seats at the Molson Centre gape like the many holes in the once-mighty Montreal Canadiens defence.The team that missed the playoffs for only the third time in 52 years last spring is wracked with injuries and off to a 3-8 start this season.
Their on-ice misery is showing at the gate with record low crowds at the 21,273-seat rink, which has forced the 24-time Stanley Cup champions to start advertising tickets that used to all but sell themselves.
"I understand the fans' frustration," said new team president Pierre Boivin. "Ticket prices are high and the results on the ice are not convincing.
"There's no denying that there's a close link between the team's performance and the number of spectators."
After six homes games, the Canadiens are averaging 19,651 spectators per game, down 665 per match from last season, which was already down from the high of 21,002 in their first full season in the new building in 1996-97.
After selling out the rink for their home opener, the Canadiens have not topped the 20,000 mark and hit a record low of 18,611 for a game against the New York Islanders last week.
Season tickets, for which there once was a waiting list, have also dropped off, although the team won't say by how much. And even a few hundred season tickets are not used for many weekday games.
The Canadiens' gate would be the envy of a lot of teams and club officials point out they remain in the league's top three in attendance, but in hockey-mad Montreal, the decline is alarming.
For the first time in memory, the Canadiens are advertising tickets.
There was even a two-for-one ticket sales promotion that Boivin admitted was a mistake, if only for leaving an impression of desperation.
The two-for-one was organized by some of the club's sponsors and involved only about 2,000 of the cheapest seats in the upper reaches of the Molson Centre.
But the empty seats have spurred the Canadiens to start taking marketing seriously.
"We want to be more visible in the community," said Boivin. "We've been playing to full houses for years and there were a lot of people who didn't have a chance to come and see a game.
"We see this as an opportunity to reach new people through things like group sales. This has forced us to act."
Vice-president Bernard Brisset said the Canadiens hired their first-ever salesman for group sales last season and are now assembling a "sales force" to target community and student groups.
"That's the first time we've done that," Brisset said.
He said the team has also changed its target audience, from the die-hard hockey fans to a younger crowd that doesn't carry the baggage of having watched some of the NHL's greatest clubs in the past.
"The younger people don't see the Canadiens in the same way we used to when they were winning Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup," said Brisset. "A lot of these kids weren't even born in the 1970s.
"They come to the rink to enjoy the game, have fun and to dance with the scoreboard."
Nonetheless, the city's notoriously demanding fans still know how to boo a poor performance by the home team.
High-scoring winger Steve Shutt used to joke that Montreal fans were always behind their team, "win or tie." That hasn't changed.
"You never like to hear it, but people paid their money and they have a right to express their disappointment," said defenceman Eric Weinrich. "I have no right to say they're wrong.
"They're paying a lot of money and they want to see a good show. Right now, we're working hard, but we're not winning."
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