When Panthers occupied the pink elephant, Miami was 100% aware of them. But no one is crazy enough to hop on I-75 and make a hike to the Everglades during rush hour.
That arena is in y'all's backyard and you don't even go. Absolutely pathetic.
It takes about as long to get to the BB&T Center during rush hour from freaking Doral as it does to get Downtown with the current traffic situation. This is kind of a nonsense argument. The team has poor attendance because they've been bad and boring for a long time and it's freaking Miami. I took a Venezuelan guy to his first ever hockey game recently and he loved it, but somebody had to drag his ass up there and explain stuff to him because he sure as hell didn't know anything about it.
Take the Metro Rail? Dude, I just burst out laughing. Come on! If you live near a Metro Rail stop there's about a 90% chance you don't even speak English.
Anyway, there are a lot of reasons why attendance is trash for South Florida sports teams, but the Panthers definitely have the worst confluence of factors for that. The fact that the team does have a pretty decent chunk of diehard fans makes me inclined to love our fanbase, rather than shred on it every chance I get.
The only way to pack the place is to make the seats more affordable (this is a problem for ALL pro sports right now that nobody wants to talk about...) and put a better product on the ice. I do think you will see attendance get a nice bump next season if this is the kind of team we can expect to see. Not only are they actually playing good hockey, but they're not boring anymore.