nhldave

It's beginning to look like there won't be much of a fan backlash as a result of the stoppage. Teams are holding various events to attract fans back and like the one described below in Dallas it seems to be working.

Over 7200 fans at this Dallas Stars party is pretty encouraging.

Dallas Stars Ice Breaker A Huge Success

September 2, 2005

By DallasStars.com Staff

Once again, Stars fans make a statement that Dallas is indeed a hockey town.


The Dallas Stars Ice Breaker, a free fan evening held at American Airlines Center on Thursday, was deemed a complete success. An event that was estimated at drawing about 5,000 fans saw over 7,200 die-hards come though the doors to finally get a chance to see their team again.

"I've been eagerly anticipating coming to the Ice Breaker ever since the Stars announced it was coming a few weeks ago," said Stars fan Bill Tehan from Richardson from the event on Thursday night. "We are having a ton of fun and it is great to see the players. All of them have smiles on their faces and they seem to be enjoying it as well. What a great night." Fifteen of the Dallas Stars players were on hand, including veterans like Mike Modano, Bill Guerin, Marty Turco, Stu Barnes, Jere Lehtinen, Brenden Morrow, Jason Arnott and Sergei Zubov, among others. The players signed autographs and took pictures with the fans for two and a half hours. Clearly, they were the main attraction, as they should be.

starsfan

I think at this point the fans are just glad to have hockey back.. It has been gone a long time and both sides were incredibly stupid and probably suffered enough.

I think the changes are going to be for the better and I think Hockey is going to come out of this stronger than ever. Hockey fans are an interesting breed of sports fan and it is not suprising to see limited bitterness. On top of that, so many players have changed teams which players can you be mad at? And are we not always mad at the owners?

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Dallas Stars Hockey

nhldave

Good point.

The real test will be in the so called hockey wasteland cities. By Christmas we should have a pretty good idea who needs to be working harder at building the game.

I don't think the comeback is going to be anywhere as difficult and protracted as baseball's which lost quite a few seasons in terms of fan attendance before things finally started to improve.

addulous

The Stars have an incredible force of fans behind them and always have since i've lived down here. If they were the worst team in the league they wouldn' t lose fan base. With the lack of ice in texas its crazy how devoted these fans are! I think i've even grown to cheer them on. Except of course when they play the best team! GO WINGS!

Another point why the fan base is so good here:

If your not from the DFW area you may not understand this but i'll explain the best i can.

Typically the media is very very negative about the sports team down here! The Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, Dallas Maverics .. etc, are dumped on badly. The radio stations and news crews and especially the Dallas Morning News paper go with negative stories. Example! The Cowboys are 4-2. Amazing i know, but instead of being congradulatory they dog on them. Saying its never gonna last etc etc. Hopefully you understand where i am going. Well, for the Stars this doesn't happen. This could be way the fans are so good to the Stars. Dunno just ranting i guess ... :haha: