It was a small moment in the Toronto Maple Leafs season, a late-January footnote that most of the NHL hardly noticed.
But when the team captain remarked how he was disappointed in the home crowd for showing so little enthusiasm for an early-game fight, it set off plenty of commentary in the center of the hockey universe about the Leafs fan base.
Or, to be more specific, the lack of one in the seats.
“I would’ve liked a little more energy from the crowd after that (fight),” Auston Matthews said following a 5-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, during which the Leafs’ Ryan Reaves dropped the gloves with Mathieu Olivier in the first period. “I thought it was a little quiet tonight, especially after two guys like that go at it.”
“He’s just admitting what everybody knows,” TSN commentator Bryan Hayes later added. “That building on a Wednesday night in January is never loud.”
Criticism of the crowds at Scotiabank Arena is not new in Toronto, where ticket prices have long outpaced the average fan’s means.
The tepid game atmosphere was raised by many of the hundreds of Leafs faithful who responded to our ownership survey last month. It was heavily featured again when we interviewed season-ticket holders about eye-opening price increases for next year’s packages.
Part of the issue in Toronto has to do with the nature of sports attendance in general over the past 20 years. More and more tickets are bought by companies as corporate perks, to the point that sitting in the lower bowl often doubles as attending a business meeting in major markets such as Toronto, New York and Vancouver.
Swanky suites and expensive lounges near the best viewing areas help woo clientele, who then help inflate revenue beyond what anyone could have imagined in earlier eras.
And yet, even with this growing trend across all sports, many organizations have started sinking millions of dollars into improving the atmosphere in their respective arenas. What’s become known as the “event presentation industry” has grown dramatically in that span. The impact has become particularly noticeable over the last decade or so in hockey, as newer markets have pushed the envelope of what’s possible at an NHL game.
According to some in the event presentation industry, the Nashville Predators may have started it all when they erected a band stage above the Zamboni entrance at Bridgestone Arena, embracing their Music City reputation with live performances integrated into the gameday experience. Plenty of other teams have followed suit, between the Tampa Bay Lightning’s outdoor areas and Tesla coil; the Seattle Kraken’s flying fish; and how the Vegas Golden Knights have … well, there’s a lot going on at T-Mobile Arena.
The result? When you travel to non-traditional markets these days, it’s jarring how much better the arena environment can be compared to some of the most venerated hockey cities on Earth.
It’s a contrast that made me wonder about the science behind working the crowd — and whether, perhaps, the NHL’s old guard can learn something from the new.
When Las Vegas landed an NHL expansion franchise in 2016, the soon-to-be Golden Knights heavily invested in the in-game experience. But they didn’t simply airlift in “hockey people” for the roles.
President Kerry Bubolz, who came by way of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, instead hired two staffers from the WWE to build out their presentation team: Jonny Greco, who became the Golden Knights’ vice president and chief experience officer, and Andrew Abrams, who specialized in video production at the arena level.
Greco and Abrams had worked in the NHL before — Greco with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Abrams with the St. Louis Blues — but their assignment for the Golden Knights was significantly different. In Vegas, they were tasked with combining what they had learned in both hockey and wrestling; applying the lessons to a unique market; and establishing a new brand that would stand out in an old league.
“Everybody thought we’d just have, like, strippers everywhere,” Greco added. “You know, ‘Vegas — that’s what they’re gonna do!’ And it was like, well, hold on, there needs to be more thought to it than that. … Let’s honor the game and honor the traditions, but let’s also play in the sandbox a little bit. Let’s innovate.”
In the beginning, Abrams and Greco didn’t know if they had a winning product to work with, given the sorry state of most expansion rosters. Instead, the Golden Knights went on to reach the Stanley Cup Final in their first season of existence.
“The show was our No. 1 priority,” said Abrams, now the Golden Knights’ vice president and executive producer. “We had to make it good because if the team wasn’t good, we still needed people to come and have a good time, pay for the ticket and generate the revenue. Luckily for us, the team has been good.”
The Golden Knights have deployed a medieval mascot to rouse the crowd since the franchise’s inception. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
The Golden Knights’ initial version of innovation included deploying an actor dressed as a medieval knight to give rousing pregame speeches on the ice while carrying out a plot of a looming battle against an opponent. The team has since added more layers to its game experience, including a group of drummers who can fire up the crowd even while play is going; a “Knight Club” experience with DJs and special celebratory bottle service at the second intermission; and, as of last season, a 34-foot-wide, smoke-emitting dragon at one end of the rink.
Abrams explained that the Golden Knights have taken a lot of inspiration from theme parks, especially when it comes to the scale of some of their designs (see: dragon). And that they try to switch things up, so even season-ticket holders don’t know what they’re going to see any given night.
Even on a Wednesday in January, NHL games in Vegas are never boring.
The approach has won the Golden Knights a boatload of recognition, including the best overall production award at the 2023 IDEA conference, an Emmy Award for their Stanley Cup banner-raising ceremony that same year, and honors as the NHL’s top team for game presentation three times in the past four seasons.
Yes, some of the success is because it’s all happening in Las Vegas. But other teams around the league have taken notice, too. And not just in the Sun Belt. The Edmonton Oilers, for example, installed an area for a band — the Oilers Drum and Brass Crew — that fires up the Rogers Place crowd during games, a new twist for a Canadian ma…