T-Birds need to improve to help ShoWare fortunes

I’ve read that one reason the ShoWare Center is losing money is they “can’t put butts in the seats!”

One possible solution seems to be to charge for parking. What’s that going to do? It’s going to force people to park offsite, or worse, not attend events. That’s the solution all right.

As a hockey fan, former player, coach and president of a hockey association in Northern New York State, I believe a better solution would be if ShoWare’s major tenant were to actually put a winning product on the ice.

The record for the Thunderbirds the last three seasons, has been a dismal 73 wins (that’s an average of 24.33 wins a season), while compiling 123 losses (an average of 41 losses a season), 11 ties and 9 overtime losses.

This past season, instead of improving, they had a worse record than the year before, 29-37-3-3 to 25-45-1-1. The leading scorer had 22 goals, 18 assists and 40 points for the year.

I realize that isn’t done every season, but we as fans deserve better than 40 points from the T-Birds’ leading scorer.

Russ Farwell has changed coaches, with negative results. Maybe a better solution would be to change the general manager for putting an inferior product on the ice. Don’t get me wrong, I support ShoWare and the T-Birds. But I see much of the financial problems ShoWare is having are because of the product the Thunderbirds are putting on the ice. They are the major tenant. You need to give fans a good reason for going to the games, especially in this economy.

Attracting Skating America was great, but for most of the winter, hockey is No. 1. More and better concerts also would boost attendance.

Fix these problems and maybe ShoWare would “put butts in the seats!”

– John R. June