Dismal Mariucci crowds the sad new playoff normal for Gophers

A year ago, when the Gophers men's hockey team hosted a first-round Big Ten playoff series for the first time since the format changed in 2018, onlookers were aghast at the paltry crowds — 1,835 for the Friday opener and 1,911 in the Saturday game, both Gophers victories in a sweep over Michigan.

A suggestion was floated, which seemed mostly like wishful thinking, that attendance suffered because the series went head-to-head with the boys' hockey state tournament.

"They know there's a big crowd 8 miles from here," Gophers coach Bob Motzko said a year ago in regards to the small Friday night crowd. "It's a pretty tough night to have a hockey game in the state of Minnesota."

This year, then, provided a good test for that theory. Yes, the Gophers still opened at home — this time against Notre Dame — and still had to go head-to-head with those pesky preps, but this past weekend they split the Friday and Saturday games (again with crowds so small that goalie Jack LaFontaine quipped: "Small? I don't think there was anyone here," on Friday).

That set up a winner-take-all Sunday finale with no high school hockey tournament against which to compete.

And the final attendance? Hey, it did increase from last year — up to a still-dismal 2,039 for Sunday's game at 3M Arena at Mariucci, a 3-2 comeback win for an interesting Gophers team fighting for its NCAA tournament life.

(Photo above from Sunday's game by the Star Tribune's Carlos Gonzalez).

But really, we knew it wasn't about the high school hockey tournament long before Sunday. Back in 2012, the Gophers drew announced crowds in excess of 9,000 for both games of a first-round playoff sweep over Alaska-Anchorage in the old WCHA.

Ah, so the Big Ten is to blame!

Well, a little. Minnesota averaged more than 9,500 fans during the regular season eight years ago before those big playoff crowds; this year, the number has dipped to 7,456 — still No. 3 in the country, but even 500 fewer than last year.

Fans have not bought into Big Ten hockey the way they supported the old rivalries of the WCHA, but that only tells a little of the weekend story. In the old days of the Gophers in the WCHA, season ticket packages included first-round playoff games. And the season ticket base was substantial back then.

Last year and this year, playoff tickets are not part of a season ticket package. If they were, one would imagine playoff crowds would be announced at levels much closer to the regular-season levels.

Take the season ticket base out of a lot of crowds, and you will see a pretty small number.

All that said: It's still pretty stunning to see so many empty seats in a 10,000-seat hockey arena in Minnesota for a playoff game.

Just don't blame it on high school hockey.