Originally Posted by
OpIv37
I will say this about Leonsis: he knows how to turn a franchise around.
When I first moved to this area in 2001, there was minimal interest in the Caps. The team pretty much sucked, and the interest dwindled to pretty much zero by 2005 or so. No one sported Caps merch around town, and they couldn't give tix away. As recently as December 2007, they'd be lucky to draw 10,000 on a weeknight and 15,000 on a weekend. And this is with a 24,000 seat arena in a metropolitan area of 5 million people.
Now, all anyone talks about is the Caps. Every other car has Caps stickers or license plate holders. Everyone has a Caps ball cap or jersey (curiously, always the new logo that they started using for 07-08, never the blue unis that they had before that or the old-skool red ones). The arena sells out every friggin night.
Granted, having arguably the best player in the world helps, and having a city full of bandwagon-jumping *******s helps. But he took the team from nothing to damn good, while in the same time period, the Sabres went from good-but-not-great to mediocre to good-but-not-great and back to mediocre. The Sabres are popular because people in NY love hockey, but the buzz and excitement are way down. Meanwhile, the buzz and excitement about the Caps is the most it's been in 20 years, maybe the most it's ever been.