Gaborik Goes and Ticket Prices?

It has been quite the last few days in NHL news. The Draft last week shook teams up and re-arranged a thing or two. On the home front, Marian Gaborik's contract with the Minnesota Wild ran-out yesterday and he went into Free Agency, signing with the New York Rangers. Emotions about this loss seem to be very mixed. Some say that we should have held onto Gaborik that he was "the Wild" and as our star player we shouldn't have let him go even if he isn't healthy enough to play. This argument bases itself on Gaborik's name recognition, that even though he wasn't performing like he used to, the fans that aren't really hard-core associate Wild Hockey with him and losing him means we may lose some of those ticket sales.


However, the opposing argument says that getting rid of Gaborik even if we didn't trade him off was the best thing the Wild could do for ticket sales. By having the cap space that he took up to offer to other players, the Wild now has a real shot and cleaning up the roster and getting a team that is competitive. This argument also says that the "fair-weather" fans will come to games regardless because if they aren't glomming on to Gaborik they will find the someone else to turn into the "new-hot-Wild-player" and all will be good.


Either way, tickets are going to start to move as the season quickly approaches and one thing is for sure, when the Wild plays the Rangers there will be interesting things to be said when Gaborik's name gets called.