Aavco Cup
"I can make you cry in this room"
- Sep 5, 2013
- 37,630
- 10,440
It's not that far to the arena in Ottawa. Roughly the distance from the Forks to the west side of Headingley or the St. FX turnoff. Plus the 417 is a legitimate access controlled freeway that runs through the city with a 100km speed limit - it's not like you'd have to hump your way past 50 red lights down Portage Avenue at 60km. However, a fairly big part of Ottawa's population lives east of Downtown. So imagine an arena in St. Francis Xavier and half the fans are coming from Transcona (but you've got a freeway between them). Say 40 minutes with no traffic; 1 hour+ with traffic. And there IS traffic before and after games. The drawback of the freeway is that there's really only one way in and out of there too - so it gets backed up. But if you live downtown or west in Ottawa, or Barhaven or Kanata, it's 15-40 minutes...so not bad at all. There's also pretty decent dedicated transit service on game nights.
So, while the arena location in Ottawa isn't ideal for many, it's still not bad for lots of others (Ottawa and burbs downtown and west probably approaches Winnipeg's population). The problem is that Ottawa's traditionally been kind of a ****ty sports town. A lot of people move there for federal government jobs - and they bring their former allegiances with them. And if you think it's weird to see locals today cheering the Leafs or Habs in Winnipeg, imagine growing up without an NHL team in the shadow of Montreal and Toronto - so lots of native Ottawans aren't really Sens fans. So stick the arena in a slightly inconvenient location, put in a meddling owner who's actively ****ing up the team and mix in a mostly ambivalent local population and you get empty seats at playoff games.
The parking lot at the arena is a nightmare though. Only one way to exit IIRC.