Originally posted by: Insane3D
Will the canes winning the cup even make front page news in Carolina? I'm taking wagers now!
STFU...Buffalo LOST.
http://www.newsobserver.com/
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/
http://www.herald-sun.com/
So what? I can still diss on Carolina and the south all I like, I used to live in that hole! Carolina sure had a hard time beating a completely injured Sabres. Either way, the season is over and looking forward to next year. Congratulations are in order to the Hurricanes obviously and the series was great, always nice to see a 7 game cup final.
But I heard a lot of this "southern team doesn't deserve to win the cup" crap when Tampa was in the finals last season. As if people didn't realize that Tampa held the league's best attendance record when the team was at it's absolute worst (27,227 fans during 1993 home opener. I still have a T-shirt from the game.)
In fact, Tampa consistantly held high attendance averages all of the way back to 1993, rivaled only by Detroit and Chicago.
Tampa attendance records (2005).
Another source, historical attendance taken from Tampa/NHL records
Official source from Tampa Bay site.
Red Wings stats
It helped Tampa that they converted a baseball park into an arena that could seat an incredible number of people for a hockey arena. That's the reasons they did make the all time record of 28K (27K and change, depending on who you ask) during game 4 of the quaterfinals (cookie to you if you can name the team without googling). They have an average of 19K fans at best historically. Their average attendance isn't that high for Tampa historically, with the highest being 19,934 when they were playing in the Thunderdome. So their average attendance isn't that high and rivaled by many more than Detroit and Chicago. Attendance is of course directly related to arena capacity. Tampa has a larger arena than just about everyone in the league, even now that they are in the Times Forum arena (capacity 19,758). The highest attendance ever in the Times Forum was 20,914 and the lowst being 7,715. So having higher attendance than most of the league is easy if they just sell out games.
Seems to me that Detroit sold out 100% of their games, along with other teams like the Canuks, Oilers, Canadiens and the Rangers. Then there were the teams that sold out 99% of the attendance for all games, they include the Leafs, Senators, Flyers, Sabres and a handful of others. Chicago hasn't had the best attendance records since they were playing well, over 10 years ago. So high attendance is good, but having 100% attendance is the best.
As for the south "not deserving" the cup, that's just a little ribbing from northerners in the classic north vs south game. The same type of attitude comes down from Canada when an American team wins the cup, or god forbid, the olympic gold in hockey! This also happens in baseball too when a Canadian team or an expansion team wins. It's just some friendly rivalry. A lot of the north vs south hockey rivalry is fueled by the fact that most of southern areas arn't die hard hockey town/areas. You really don't have too many southern residents putting their children on skates at 2 years old and really don't have many native southerners playing in hockey. Either way it doesn't matter, they took the cup!