Why Can’t PC Hockey Replicate the PC Hoops Home Advantage - McMahon
Robert McMahon, Sports Columnist
Why Can’t PC Hockey Replicate the PC Hoops Home Advantage - McMahon
In 1972-73, the Friars left those venues. The men’s basketball team left the friendly confines of an on-campus arena. The Friars have played downtown for over 50 years with 7 million Friar fans joyfully filling the former Civic Center, the Dunk, and now the Amica Mutual Pavilion (AMP). The hockey team moved in 1973 to shiny new arena on campus, the Schneider Arena.
I have been to Friar games at both arenas over the past several years, and the difference in atmosphere currently between the two venues is striking and discouraging.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe AMP atmosphere for PC basketball, particularly for Big East games, is one of the best in the country, and the envy of most of the other Big East schools. The Friars routinely draw sellouts of 12,400 fans for every one of their Big East games. PC students fill the end zone seating areas, the pep band is loud, the cheerleaders and dance team rev up the crowd. I do miss inflatable Friar Dom, however, who has been retired. The students are raucous, boisterous, rowdy, and sometimes raunchy. The atmosphere is high energy and memorable.
Opposing team coaches and national broadcasters comment on the “intimidation factor” that the AMP has on teams playing the Friars at the AMP. And the atmosphere for the PC basketball Friars helps to produce results. With a difficult home schedule for the last two seasons, PC is 29-7 at the AMP.
Different Mojo
The atmosphere for the PC hockey Friars at the on-campus home ice at Schneider Arena is currently very different. While the Friars missed out on an NCAA bid last year at the end of the season, they were ranked in the top 15 in the country for the entire season. But the fan support and atmosphere this past season were meager.
Schneider Arena officially seats only 3,063 fans. The Friars played 18 official home games last season. Only one home game, against Denver, the eventual NCAA champion, was a sellout, drawing a standing-room crowd of 3,465. PC’s average home attendance for last season was 2,482 fans. Only last season’s lowly Hockey East teams of Vermont and Connecticut drew fewer fans in the eleven-team Hockey East. Even PC’s home game against arch-rival Boston College, at the time of the game the #1 team in the country, didn’t sell out, drawing only 2,904 fans. That’s amazing and dispiriting.
PC students can walk to the games at Schneider from their dorms and nearby off-campus apartments on Eaton Street, unlike the AMP, which requires a caravan of school buses to get the students downtown to the Friar basketball games. But students only filled the student section of Schneider last season for one-third of the home games. Schneider’s cozy size and low roof should be the perfect venue for noisy student fans and a great atmosphere. But it hasn’t been for most games in the past few years. The pep band is often minus several members. Student fans who do show up often leave at the end of the second period.
Except for a few games, the atmosphere at PC hockey games is simply unremarkable, often just neutral. This relatively modest Schneider atmosphere does not help the team. Of PC’s 18 home games last season, the team won 10 games, and lost or tied 8 of them; 2 of the losses were by one goal. I truly believe that better fan support in numbers and atmosphere would have made a difference in those one-goal losses and the three ties. Two more wins and PC would have made the NCAA tournament. And three of the final four teams in last season’s NCAA tournament—Boston College, Michigan, and Denver—were teams that PC beat during the regular season!
After the 2015 NCAA Championship, Schneider rocked for a few years. Why haven’t there more fans and better student support for the hockey Friars at Schneider in recent years, particularly in the past two years? Is it because PC is a basketball school only? Has PC’s once rabid ice hockey culture faded with its current nationwide student body that has largely never attended hockey games before? Are there only enough hockey fans in Rhode Island to support the Providence Reds? Is the decline of high school hockey in Rhode Island withering the overall interest in college hockey in the state?
These macro factors may account for some of the modest fan support for PC hockey. But I also think that the PC Athletic Department could do a better job marketing the PC hockey brand to its own students and to the hockey fan base in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts. When was the last time you saw a PC hockey player on a local sportscast or on PC’s social media? I’ve been watching PC’s goalie Philip Svedeback for the last two seasons become one of the best college goalies in the country. I couldn’t tell you what he looks like, and I’ve never heard him speak. How are fans supposed to connect with the PC hockey players if they never see their faces off the ice?
The PC Athletic Department should also look at ticket prices for PC hockey games. Season ticket prices are reasonable, but individual non-student game ticket prices are steep, even for modest opponents several days in advance of a game—often in the $50-60 range, or higher. PC is misreading the hockey market in Rhode Island with those prices and depriving the team of much-needed fan support for a few extra bucks.
For this upcoming season Coach Nate Leaman and his staff have put together another potential nationally ranked PC hockey team with several outstanding freshman recruits and four new graduate transfers. Ten of PC’s players this year are NHL draftees, the most of any team in Hockey East. The PC Athletic Department has an obligation to help build fan support for Coach Leaman and the Friar skaters. Let’s make the Schneider rink the toughest pond to play on in the country and give the Friars the support that they deserve.