re superstars and attendance was teemu selanne was leaders in apr ists ists ca dchhabra stpl ists ca deepak chhabra writes dean j falcione posting from jrmst pitt edu writes but i think the reason is lemieux had a point season and was the first non gretzky to win the hart and ross since people turned out to watch him play i will grant that a star like mario will draw fans even if the team sucks but this is short term only i still do not think the attendance increase will last unless the team is a winning competitive improving butt kicking one pittsburgh was still getting better so people continued to support them if they suddenly dropped to say points you d have knee surgery for some of the people jumping off the bandwagon i disagree mcnall has demonstrated with gretzky that a star brings out the crowds whether or not the team is expected to do well very few fans real istically expect the kings to do well this year although i do and yet they still go out to see gretzky this is the marketing strategy selling the game by selling the stars that is employed by baseball and notably the nba and this is the attitude that the new bettman mcnall leadership is bringing to the league they have gone on record as stating that they are trying to sell the game on its stars timo salami and brett hull are perfect examples of players that real fans know aren t worth a damn and yet being benificiaries of marketing oriented coaching strategies have goal totals that would indicate to the casual observer the very fans the nhl wants to attract that these players are indeed superstars they made the transaction to try and build a winner around mario that is true but the improvement in attendance came before they started doing this coffey late in and before they even had a playoff bound team a doubling of attendance occured in from the previous year an increase from points to points is not going to do that the arrival of mario lemieux is what did it it might help to think about what would go through a fan s mind who suddenly found an interest in mario and the pens was it gee mario lemieux is amazing i ll go watch him play or was it gee now we ve got a kick ass guy on our side i ll go watch him play i think it was the latter it ain t nearly so simple as this the casual fan doesn t think about much at all can you actually find an adult with a digit iq who believes that mcdonalds makes good hamburgers i did provide the example of rocket ismail and the toronto argonauts of the cfl did you leave it out because you don t know much about the cfl if that s the case then fair enough but if it isn t the case then i m curious to hear your explanation yes but apparently the rocket has not lived up to his marketing responsi bilities has he he was hyped initially as a superstar but outside of one grey cup game he has done very little to maintain enhance that assess ment of his talents most argo fans probably feel the team would be better off without him cordially as always rm roger maynard maynard ramsey cs laurentian ca
