2017 Sens Off-Season

tim1_2 wrote:I like Phaneuf, but if you can move him without taking a bad contract back, that'd make sense given all the guys the Sens need to resign.

My sentiments exactly. If you can move him and get something back in return that alleviates you from his contract then do it.

With his high cap hit and declining salary, Arizona could be a good candidate in another year or two. Maybe even the Isles since they are pretty unpredictable

I'd rather not lose Phaneuf this year. It would leave us too vulnerable after losing methot. If you ask me it would be great if Nein had another great year. That would narrow the remainder of his contract down a bit and would add some trade value.

Flo The Action wrote:I'd rather not lose Phaneuf this year. It would leave us too vulnerable after losing methot. If you ask me it would be great if Nein had another great year. That would narrow the remainder of his contract down a bit and would add some trade value.

I would love for Phaneuf to impart some of his how-to-get-away-with-cross-checks expertise to the likes of Chabot, Harpur, Englund, Jaros. So, yeah, stick around for at least one more season. Having Elisha around doesn't hurt, either. Remember when we had Fisher (Carrie), Comrie (Hilary), Campoli (Gia) in the lineup?

So someone help me understand this.

The org has removed 1500 seats in the arena in order to help drive the "want" for season tickets.
Now I'm no genius at math but we're we ever really bellow 1500 empty seats during the season?
If you can fill it up can you not, do you not have 1500 more seats and the money that means?
Aren't walk in ticket holders price much higher than what season ticket holders wind up paying per game?

The only conclusion I could come up with is that by having more season tickets holder money the team can reinvest that money in the market to generate a much higher return. But is it worth loosing 1500 seats for that?

The logic escapes me and I'd love to understand

I, too, don't really get the economics behind removing seats. I'm curious to know what this looks like too...just some empty rows where there used to be seats?


Also, the comments from Karlsson about possibly not being ready for the start of the season aren't overly encouraging. He also had a synthetic tendon implanted in his ankle to replace a real one.

I wouldn't worry about Karlsson personally. He can play whenever he is ready. Which is probably now.

The seating makes sense. There would usually be too many tickets available at dirt cheap prices on stubhub. Now without some of those, prices will be higher on stibhub and many will simply just buy from the team now. They definitely didn't need the 19k capacity especially during the regular season. This just forces seats to sell for their properly value

The seats are covered with banners now, just like in baseball woth the black tarps, but with sens graphics on them instead.

I also noticed how they said that thei. cheapest seats were always the empty and that's a bit of a lie. Removing the. Heap seats forces people to buy the more expensive ones. 
It's not like the move is permanent one. I bet if the season is permanently sold out they will open up the closed sections for the playoffs.

Im not sure I like it but whatever. I'm not a regular ticket holder. although my yotes  fan buddy and I are coming down for the game in the fall

Flo The Action wrote:I also noticed how they said that thei. cheapest seats were always the empty and that's a bit of a lie. Removing the. Heap seats forces people to buy the more expensive ones. 
It's not like the move is permanent one. I bet if the season is permanently sold out they will open up the closed sections for the playoffs.

Im not sure I like it but whatever. I'm not a regular ticket holder. although my yotes  fan buddy and I are coming down for the game in the fall

That was not a lie, that was literally what happened in the New York playoff games and regular season games. The unsold seats were the highest seats

Season tickets are something like 15% off regular. Other promos exist for less popular games that are discounted more. Tickets that are given away are discounted 100%. I'm guessing there won't be as many giveaways.

This is a move to drive up demand (oh, look, there are fewer than 500 tickets left, I better get mine now; after a few sellouts they go even quicker. They can always open up those seats next year or for the playoffs.

Those empty seats can carry advertising.

Ev wrote:

Flo The Action wrote:I also noticed how they said that thei. cheapest seats were always the empty and that's a bit of a lie. Removing the. Heap seats forces people to buy the more expensive ones. 
It's not like the move is permanent one. I bet if the season is permanently sold out they will open up the closed sections for the playoffs.

Im not sure I like it but whatever. I'm not a regular ticket holder. although my yotes  fan buddy and I are coming down for the game in the fall

That was not a lie, that was literally what happened in the New York playoff games and regular season games. The unsold seats were the highest seats

I wasn't talking just playoffs. I remembered watching games during the season and the empty seats were everywhere. If they are using a couple of games to justify a year long problem then it's using a terribly small sample size to justify a problem.

wprager wrote:Those empty seats can carry advertising.

Thats a good point. Probably not as much as tickets but that's revenue non the less

I think a guy like tom anselmi would know what he's doing. I think fans need to stop talking about things at a certain point. This is one of them.

Ev wrote:I wouldn't worry about Karlsson personally. He can play whenever he is ready. Which is probably now.

The seating makes sense. There would usually be too many tickets available at dirt cheap prices on stubhub. Now without some of those, prices will be higher on stibhub and many will simply just buy from the team now. They definitely didn't need the 19k capacity especially during the regular season. This just forces seats to sell for their properly value

The seats are covered with banners now, just like in baseball woth the black tarps, but with sens graphics on them instead.

Makes sense. And yeah, with the banners covering them, they can just take those off if games start selling out and/or in the playoffs.

Ev wrote:I think a guy like tom anselmi would know what he's doing. I think fans need to stop talking about things at a certain point. This is one of them.

True, on the one hand, on the other, he comes from a market that's an order of magnitude bigger with a 10-year waiting list to buy season tickets. So he's probably reading up his notes from some first year business courses.

Ev wrote:I think a guy like tom anselmi would know what he's doing. I think fans need to stop talking about things at a certain point. This is one of them.

Im not saying he doesn't know what he's doing but I want to know the why. I feel the logic is to squeeze more money out of the people that could only afford the cheap tickets.

I understand business pretty well, I just want to know if they have any scruples when it comes to accommodating the fan base that can't afford to go to many games.

Flo The Action wrote:

Ev wrote:I think a guy like tom anselmi would know what he's doing. I think fans need to stop talking about things at a certain point. This is one of them.

Im not saying he doesn't know what he's doing but I want to know the why. I feel the logic is to squeeze more money out of the people that could only afford the cheap tickets.

I understand business pretty well, I just want to know if they have any scruples when it comes to accommodating the fan base that can't afford to go to many games.

I don't think the team needs to cater to those that can't afford the games. Listen - it's a luxury. If you can't afford it, watch it on TV (this is the route I go 99% of the time...hard to justify spending the money on this when I have two kids). The team needs to ensure they're making the most money possible, which is finding the sweet spot between ticket price and attendance. This is further complicated by the ease with which tickets can be re-sold these days (Stubhub, etc).

The move downtown will solve most of the Senators' attendance woes (assuming public transit is reasonably efficient) as they'll be drawing on a much larger population (both ends of the city, plus Gatineau). So for now, they're stuck trying to find ways to sell their product. Hopefully the team continues to be successful and people start coming out more. I had season tickets the year after they went to the Finals, and I had no trouble selling any of my tickets for face value when I couldn't attend a game. I know a few season ticket holders now that have great difficulty selling off unwanted tickets, which leads to decisions to just not buy season tickets in the first place. I think a winning team will solve most of these issues.

Sorry, we probably didn't want to start discussing attendance woes AGAIN, but here we are.

I think there's also a trend in the NHL for slightly smaller arenas. I remember a few years back everybody wanted 20k or more. The Senators revamped to add seats, remember that? Then the big NBC deal came along and a full rink was more important. The new rink in Edmonton is just over 18k, Vegas is 17.5k, Winnipeg was criticized for having an arena under 16k but at least they are selling out. Chicago is huge but can bump up capacity with over 2k standing room. So the Jets can probably sell 18k+ for playoffs.