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Poor attendance

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Mikeshane said:
The format of the tournament is stupid, you get these amazing teams together and some of the best teams don't even play each other. No Sweden vs Finland or Russia vs Canada this year for instance.

Cut a couple of the bottom tier teams, have everyone play each other at least once and have the gold medal decided by a best of 3. The top teams playing each other is still exciting but these mismatch blowouts have become tiresome.
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100% agree. I'm an American, but the one matchup I really wanted to see this year was Finland-Sweden. It's kind of ridiculous that we don't even get that. The only Finland game I could go watch to get my fix was against Denmark, where I watched Finland outshoot them 62-7.

People are really wondering why no one wants to take off work and spend money on that? It's a joke.
 
admiralcadillac said:
Most peope in north america willing to shell out money give very little ****s about their country winning the wjc in the early stages of the tourny, they care more about watching their nhl team's prospects
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Yeah that's why all the NHL jerseys in the stands. Suuuuuuuuure
 
Prepare for poor attendance again. The weather here has been a giant disaster between travel bans, blizzards, and 100 car pile ups. Not sure how much of an impact Grayson will make here but it surely doesn't help.

A "bomb cyclone" is going to explode over the East Coast

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ek93 said:
100% agree. I'm an American, but the one matchup I really wanted to see this year was Finland-Sweden. It's kind of ridiculous that we don't even get that.
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And? Do you expect this to happen every year? There are two groups. There's a good chance X is not in the same group as Y.

The groups should be decided purely based on previously results (or is there a IIHF ranking for U20). Not pulled out of a hat "just because X needs to play with Y". Leave that unsporting stuff to World Cup of Hockey.

ps. Actually... there might have been some manual tweaking of the groups: Canada-USA obviously had to be in the same group because of the outdoor game. IIHF has done this in the past in men's tournaments too to accommodate the host country in a better way, but at least this is only used in special cases.
 
World juniors were great up until the 2012-13 one where RNH was Canada's captain. Before that was the most exciting era of wjch, Canada winning in Toronto wasn't as big as it would've been back then.
 
I'm a huge fan of this tournament, I've traveled multiple times to watch it (was lucky to be at the Canada win over Russia in 2015). But this year has really been a snoozer. Too many lopsided games, and the outdoor game was painfully slow. I really look forward to outdoor games but they got unlucky with the snow causing havoc, and the camera angle they had to use was terrible it was so hard to see what was going on (obviously setup for NFL games).

I don't really know what the best solution is, but I do like the best of 3 gold medal game idea mentioned previously. Maybe drop the bottom two teams and round robin the remaining 8, top 4 go into playoffs, followed by the best of 3 finale.
 
Heart Eater said:
World juniors were great up until the 2012-13 one where RNH was Canada's captain. Before that was the most exciting era of wjch, Canada winning in Toronto wasn't as big as it would've been back then.
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Are you maybe a Real Canada supporter per se?

And do you real(l)y think everybody except Canadians knows the shortening of Royal Nugent Hopkins name?

I maybe do ... but that's just me - but the rest of the hockey world!?

Hold your horses quite a bit Canada ...

It ain't only your game no more; remember, Canada?
 
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chauron said:
That's why we should play in europe, in Sweden for example, where they care about european and north american teams.
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Europeans don't really care that much about the U20s.

Just need to lower the prices and go to non NHL cities in Canada and you'll see a recovery.

I'm all for European games though
 
I'm so glad nobody is attending this WJC in Buffalo. I mean, really....who didn't see this coming? When you have to hold the tourney in Toronto every second year just to make a profit, that tells you something. They should reduce ticket prices, since they ahve priced out 90% of the population from it. Did they really expect the entire Southern Ontario to cross the border to witness this?

I still remember then ticket prices were reasonable. YouTube the 2005 tourney in Grand Forks, North Dakota. 10,000 Canadians (almost all Winnipeggers) came out, and it actually seemed like a home game for Canada, even when the US-Canada matches were happening. I hope nobody even bothers to go to the Gold Medal game. It will send a strong message to the IIHF that they are a bunch of greedy pigs, and we will not be forced to pay an arm or a leg to watch Junior Hockey.
 
I am disappointed in Buffalo. It's a shame the lack of support for their team and Country. Its completely ignored. I thought they were the hockey capital of America. I would much rather watch those kids play giving all their heart and effort than a boring one of 82 Sabres game. Can't always rely on Canada to fill their seats.
 
Yeah Buffalo is easily the worst city in America for winter weather. Insane how much snow they've received combined with one of the worst stretches of cold the Great Lakes have seen in years. Still I'm driving from Toledo to the game Friday night
 
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Bad weather, high prices, not sure of scheduling (the nature of a knock out tourney). Lot of stuff going on around Christmas till the first week of January . And lot of sports is free...TV. NFL, US college sports, NHL and more.
The tourney just isn't as interesting as it once was. Use to be many of these players only played in North America at this tourney. It was unique to see them. Now many of these players play junior or college in North America.
I would think the TV ratings are sinking also.
 
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as I said before, hold this thing in Chicago and I guarantee over 10k per US game minimum...but USA Hockey wanted its big spectacle of an outdoor game where plenty of fans from Canada could fill up seats as well instead..
 
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Plus they wanted to make use of the twin rink facility that Buffalo features. The last tournament held here had pretty impressive attendance numbers, so I would assume the organizers have been a bit blindsided by this lack of support.
 
Bad weather and some really bad traffic/accidents as a result (there was a big one on the QEW right before the outdoor game, and there was a 20-something car pile up near the airport yesterday completely shutting down traffic in both directions), plus high prices, and the BILLS MADE THE FRIGGIN PLAYOFFS.

I also think there's an element of people just getting bored with the tournament. I think the novelty/excitement wears off when 3 of the last 4 tournaments have been held (at least partially) in either Buffalo or Toronto. Buffalo also hosted in 2011.
 
Buffalo fans also might just want to forget about hockey for awhile. The Sabres performance has undoubtedly soured a decent portion of western NY hockey fans, and it's not like some short tournament does anything to help rejuvenate any lost interest in hockey.
 
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If they wanted to make this tournament competitive and limit the blow outs would be go the route of what they do at the Women's World Championship. Have the top 5 teams in one group, the next 5 in the other. The top 4 teams from the A group advance to the medal round and the top 2 from the B group. The top 2 teams from the A group would get a bye to the semi-finals.

Now doing this would go back to 6 teams making the medal round as opposed to what it is now with eight. I know its artificially making it more competitive by not having Canada, USA, Russia etc beating up on some of the lesser teams but could make it more watchable overall. What do you think?
 
A truly unfortunate combination of weather, Russ Brandon and 2 horrific traffic accidents immediately before two huge games (one on the QEW before USA-Canada and then a 75-car accident on the 90 West just a few hours prior to the USA-Russia quarterfinal game probably put a big dent in attendance.

However, I'll venture a guess that most Buffalo hockey fans are tired of being sold on "prospects," having been sold it for 6 years and having nothing to show for it. While the WJC is always great hockey in general, and inherently worth attending, in this case it's probably understandable given this ridiculous confluence of circumstances. Beyond that, but perhaps equally important, the Canadian team doesn't have the type of blue chip prospects this year that would drive attendance (with apologies to Cale Makar and, I guess, Mike McLeod...Jake Bean?). Arguably, Canada wasn't even favored to win. That has to hurt attendance (no offense to Canadians and your nearly unlimited capacity for national pride).

Full disclosure, I had tickets to USA-Russia and didn't go because the 90 (the main westbound highway into Buffalo) was closed and the weather was brutal. I wasn't about to put the kids in the car and drive towards that s*** show.
 
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