Hockey Canada looks for answers to world junior attendance woes at Bell Centre
MONTREAL — International Ice Hockey Federation president Rene Fasel wonders if Montreal is a one-team town and that’s why attendance has been weak at the world junior championship.
“Here, everyone says, there’s one team — it’s Canadiens, Canadiens, Canadiens,” Fasel said Thursday. “Montreal is the Montreal Canadiens, there you go.”
It certainly seems that way with the wide stretches of empty seats at the Bell Centre for a world junior tournament that was such a huge hit in Calgary and Edmonton in 2012 and in Ottawa in 2009.
Hockey Canada president Tom Renney said ticket pricing and sales strategies will be reviewed with an eye to boosting sales for the next time it is held in Canada in 2019 in Vancouver and Victoria.