Why were there so many empty seats? As good as you're team is playing shouldn't these games be selling out?
As a former Thrasher fan, I'm sorta sensitive to that kind of stuff. Hope to get up there for a playoff game.
We've had good attendance throughout - if I had to guess I'd chalk it up to one of the following:
1) Sabres games have a reputation of being games you don't want to go to. I don't know if that reputation is still deserved or not, but there it is.
2) Midweek game early in the week (most of our home games thus far have been Thursdays)
3) First of a 3-game homestand that includes a Saturday game (ie someone wanting to see a game this week has 2 other options, including one that's not a schoolnight)
4) Duke had a home game last night, so that might have drawn away those fans who happen to be Duke fans.
Still, as Sasha Cares pointed out, this has been our lowest attended game thus far - prior to that, the lowest draw was Boston on 1/28/13 which still saw 17,190 in attendance. We've also had 6 sellouts out of 10 home games (1/22 against Tampa, 2/1 against Ottawa, 2/14 against Toronto, 2/23 against Tampa, 2/28 against Pittsburgh, and 3/2 against Florida) and of the 4 non-sellouts, 2 of them (1/24 against Buffalo and 2/21 against Winnipeg) were only a few hundred short of a sellout. The full numbers:
1/22/13 (vs. Lightning) - 18,680
1/24/13 (vs. Sabres) - 18,081
1/28/13 (vs. Bruins) - 17,190
2/1/13 (vs. Senators) - 18,680
2/14/13 (vs. Maple Leafs) - 18,680
2/21/13 (vs. Jets) - 18,282
2/23/13 (vs. Lightning) - 18,680
2/28/13 (vs. Penguins) - 18,680
3/2/13 (vs. Panthers) - 18,680
3/5/13 (vs. Sabres) - 15,277