From A2Y this morning:

The Wing win last night, as fun as it was to see, will be secondary to the echo chamber they played in. As Mike Emrich and Ed Olczyk did their pre-game deal on camera, the results of Red Wing apathy jumped out at us on Versus. A thousand empty seats just minutes before faceoff.

For years Hockeytown operated under the assumption that the fans would take whatever they got, and they were right. But a poor economy and plenty of other complaints have changed things drastically. Detroit still has a huge base of fans, but at this point it would appear the team has sucked those fans dry.For what it’s worth, I think the Canucks are doing a much better job at responding to their fanbase than ever in the past—and certainly better than the Wings by a long shot. But they might not want to get too cocky about it, either.It’s not that many years ago that GM Place had their own sea of empty seats.

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