Attendance in the NHL

So i decided to take a break from usual postings about how the Ducks are doing and take a broader view on the issue of attendance in the NHL. Rodney Paul wrote an article in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology about the attendance issue the NHL has been facing for many years now.

As many people know, attendance at hockey games has been a major issue ever since the strike. The National Hockey League decided to do some research into what could increase the attendance at hockey games. The results that came back were people loved goals scored and the violence involved with the game.

Goal outputs since the 1990's have dramatically fallen. The NHL took this into consideration when they changed the rules during the strike. They decreased the size of the pads of the goalies to allow for more goals. As for violence, the NHL took a completely different stance. They decided to stricken the penalties and even hand out suspensions for players getting too many penalties.

One more effect the NHL found that helped increase the attendance at hockey games was to increase the number of rivalry games and inter conference games. They also increased the number of times Canadian teams play each other in a season. Through the past several years after these schedule changes began, the NHL noticed a significant increase in attendance at numerous games.