Land of the Leaf

I couldn’t come up with anything insightful or even entertaining to say about last night’s 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.  It’s not so much a Leafs’ loss that’s got my tongue, the Lightning do have a lot more skill than Toronto, but it’s more like their season is getting much more difficult to care about at this point.  What did catch my attention this morning was a Dave Feschuk piece from the Toronto Star, that hints at a possible defection in the Leafs’ season ticket base.  Say what?

Could it be that one of North America’s most loyal fan bases is fed up with their under-performing team’s lousy 4-year skid?  With a 3.5% increase in ticket prices scheduled for next season the front office is looking to entice the suits to re-up on their season ticket packages by offering ‘face-time’ with Brian Burke.  The Toronto Blue Jays already offer a similar perk to ticket holders with their annual state-of-the-union address (which by most accounts was an ambush on fans this past winter).

Most teams in any sport that go 4-years without a playoff appearance run into some sort of a dip in ticket sales (usually referred to as “growing pains”), and it appears that the Leafs’ front office is preparing for the worst by not even offering refunds on season ticket package deposits.  As Feschuk managed to nail the buyer-beware cognitive hesitance with this bit:

“Maybe the newly imposed terms on incumbent season-ticket holders – this year, for the first time ever, the initial 20 per cent deposit on season seats is non-refundable – is prompting at least a little hesitation.”

Perhaps a drop in ticket prices would be in order, it would be by any other team that has been this bad over a period of 4 seasons.  Imagine that, an ACC filled with hockey fans that would actually look up from their Blackberry during the play, or be in their Platinum seat when a period starts rather than stuffing their corporate faces with sushi.