from Terry Frei of the Denver Post,

On the recent Avalanche road trip that included three games in the New York area — two in New York boroughs, Manhattan and Brooklyn; and one in Newark, N.J. — a laugh-inducing moment came when the attendance was announced at the Colorado- New Jersey game.

The official count at the Prudential Center was 14,019, considerably short of capacity.

There couldn't have been more than 9,000 in the building.

The crowd was so sparse, the blocks of empty seats so glaring, it all looked like one of the gatherings visiting NHL beat writers love to poke fun at, but only if it's in the easy-target, nontraditional league markets. (I believe it's a Professional Hockey Writers Association rule: Thou shalt tweet shot of sparse crowd in Florida, Carolina or Arizona by the 5:00 mark of the first period.)

But, hey, when it happens in the New York area, or in other "Original Six" markets such as Boston or Chicago in not-so-long ago slow periods, or even in Edmonton and Calgary when the Canadian economy had lost an edge, that's overlooked.

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