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Years ago, award-winning sportswriter Frank Deford wrote a back-page Sports Illustrated column that, in part, heaped praise on St. Louis-area baseball fans for having the sense NOT to attend games at Busch Stadium that featured sub-par talent wearing the home whites.
In essence, Deford claimed that Cardinals' fans had earned the right to be snooty about the baseball that they paid to see.
And if the product on the field wasn't up to snuff...well, it was just another signal that St. Louis was a true baseball town, populated by true baseball fans...who couldn't be fooled with smoke and mirrors.
I've never forgotten Deford's words...and I wonder whether they apply, in the fall of 1997, to St. Louis' hockey fans.
Here's the deal.
Fewer than sixteen thousand tickets were sold for the Blues' Opening Night home game vs. Buffalo (the Blues lost, 3-1, in a game dominated by Dominic Hasek).
Sure, it was a Wednesday night and all.
But still, opening night is opening night...and, counting standing room attendees, on a good night the Kiel Center has been known to play host to nearly 21,000 hockey fans.
Not only that, fan favorite Kelly Chase was reacquired from Toronto just in time to get his older number (#39) stitched on his jersey.
But the new Blues management team's efforts to make the Kiel Center a more hockey-friendly place (blue paint, blue seats, new banners, etc.) were viewed by a substantially less-than-capacity group of humans.
[Hockey fans are human, right?]
Anyway, last year's excuses for below-par attendance figures (i.e. the Cardinals are in the playoffs, football fans are still paying off their PSLs) don't hold up any more.
So why, on Opening Night, were thousands of St. Louisans reluctant to pay money to watch their Blues?
In an effort to answer that question, on Opening Night we quizzed a couple dozen upper tier fans in attendance that night, as well as ten or so pizza eaters at a popular eatery just down the street from the old Arena.
Their answers, for the most part, fit into four categories--
(1) Kiel Center ticket prices, for good seats, are still too high
(2) the game was on free TV
(3) Brett Hull is unsigned beyond the current season, the Blues' management team doesn't have the nerve to trade him, and even the truest of Blues' fans is growing weary of a yet another unpleasant chapter in the team's soap opera
(4) Brett Hull is unsigned beyond the current season, and the Blues' management team should do all they can to re-sign the club's only legitimate superstar.
From this angle, 1, 2, and 3 look just about right.
C'mon, Blues' boss men. Bite the bullet, and get on with it.
If Hull won't do a two- or three-year deal at a price you're comfortable with, then trade him and REALLY begin the process of starting over.
The Sabres dealt C Pat LaFontaine to rid themselves of a contract that they didn't want to pay...and the Buffalo franchise will survive quite nicely.
As for idea #4?
Hull's multimillion dollar salary is plenty enough reward for a hockey player...especially for a hockey player that has never accused of being a clone of Mark Messier in the leadership department.
Which doesn't diminish Hull's St. Louis accomplishments one iota--his goal scoring and positive media image are two of the main reasons that the Kiel Center was built.
In any event, 14,787 tickets were sold for Friday night's game (the season's second) vs. the Phoenix Coyotes.
Huge sections of empty seats were in evidence all over the Kiel Center.
Frank Deford would be proud of Blues' fans, too.
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