Map of ECAC & WCHA Men’s Hockey Attendance

The map above shows some of the attendance figures from the teams in the WCHA and ECAC Hockey conferences, the top two in the country in terms of performance.

College hockey reached an all-time high in attendance this past season, reaching nearly 4.5 million attendees, according to CollegeHockeyNews.com. The top two schools based on average attendance are plotted in the map above, Wisconsin (15,048) and North Dakota (11,654). Although these schools had the third and fourth highest capacities in their rinks, winning had a direct correlation with the statistics. USCHO’s final polls ranked North Dakota at No. 4 and Wisconsin at No. 5.

Cornell and cross-town rival Yale were the only schools in ECAC Hockey that filled their arenas at a higher rate than Quinnipiac last year. Senior Associate Director of Athletics Bill Mecca credits Quinnipiac’s new rink for the big crowds.

“When you look at the TD Bank Sports Center you have a venue that quite honestly is better than any high school facility that our students are accustomed to,” Mecca said. “It’s something new, it’s state-of-the-art. It’s the winter time, there’s nights. Hockey brings its own element with the teams we play. I really do believe it’s the facility that generates the incredible support we got this past year.”

One student who didn’t attend many hockey games at the TD Bank Sports Center this year said people were too lazy to go up to the York Hill campus to watch the games.

“Not as many people know about them,” said Connor Gillivan, a sophomore at QU. “People are just doing something else on the weekend.”

AlmaMatters.org Widget

Here is the widget I created for college sports marketing.

The widget is based around the site AlmaMatters.org, a site created by Ryan Erisman about college sports and alumni marketing. The widget provides an easy way to keep updated on the latest marketing ideas used in college sports, such as Penn State’s “whiteout.”

Erisman said in an e-mail that “99 percent of the information comes from campaigns that we (DME Sports Marketing) have done for either college or pro sports teams.”