Originally Posted by
Nicky Santoro
To the guy that said Toronto is the biggest there is has no idea what he's talking about. There are an avg of 800,000 viewers for leafs games, while there are 700,000 for habs games. but Toronto have a couple of million more people than MTL. every tv set in montreal is on the habs game, even though habs were never in it. MTL is mecca hockey capital of the world, not Toronto. Also, look at the attendances for this past yr. T.O is 5th, while MTL is 2nd.
1 Chicago 21,533
2 Montreal 21,273
3 Philadelphia 20,433
4 Detroit 20,114
5 Toronto 19,506
i am obsessed with reading every newspaper across U.S to see if they talk hockey, and Philly hardly talked hockey all yr, only now. Philadelphia loves their phillies 1st, 2nd Eagles, and flyers just a tad over Sixers. even philly sports radio all yr never talked about flyers, all eagles, phillies.. I know L.A hate hockey. today's LA times only mentioned Lakers and Dodgers, and 1 tiny paragraph about Kings up 3-0 in series. Their ratings this year were horrible. hardly anyone watched them. They couldn't care less there. Pittsburgh is a huge huge hockey town. STL likes their hockey. NYR tv ratings this year were horrible for a great team they had. The knicks tripled them. Boston loves their hockey. They're even ahead of celtics now, but it's a red sox town. hockey is also pretty popular is nashville, buffalo and washington, esp buffalo.. oh and MINNY is crazy for hockey. detroit loves hockey, but still way behind the lions and tigers. also, DET have tons of canadians living in DET, which helps. and the 3 cities that hate hockey the most. FLA, PHOE and LA. no one hardly watched, but SJ had bigger ratings than warriors and A's, but of course not the Giants. they killed everyone.
and finally chicago. not only did they lead in attendance this year, but i read an article in the tribune this week that no other team is sports has achieved this stat. in the last 5 yrs, the popularity of the hawks is close to 6x more than in 2007. they took a poll and saw that they are now ahead of bulls, white sox and believe it or not, the CUBS imagine that. of course not the bears. chicago's #1 sport there is by far the NFL. i am so proud of chicago.