As NHL lockout ends, the local AHL team hopes fans will show support.
Charlie Pompea, left, the owner of the Springfield Falcons and Bruce Landon, president and general manager, are keeping close tabs on the AHL standings and attendance.
SPRINGFIELD - Each American Hockey League season brings a renewed effort by the Springfield Falcons to gauge their market and build their base.
The 2012-13 season added a new dynamic to the equation. A lockout of players by National Hockey League owners turned the AHL, which serves as the sport's top minor league, into the best show in town for the first three months of the season.
How that affected the Falcons was not an easy question for president and general manager Bruce Landon to answer.
"How do you gauge the effect?'' Landon asked rhetorically in late December, when the Falcons were noticing a small attendance uptick.
"Is (mildly increased interest) because we were in first place or because of the lockout? I haven't seen any jump in attendance here because of the lockout.''
What no one disputes is the crucial role played by the Falcons in the economic health of Springfield, especially its downtown.
In 2006, a study by Western New England College (now a university) conservatively pegged the team's economic impact on the city at $6.62 million per year. This figure included spending by their players, hotel lodging and meals by visiting teams and referees, spending by the team and its fans, and job creation.
The Falcons are the MassMutual Center's primary tenant, filling 38 regular season dates as well as preseason games, practices and - they hope - a playoff season.
The AHL and Falcons have been affected by NHL labor problems in the past. The entire 2004-05 NHL season was wiped out by a similar lockout.
Landon said the AHL noticed a bump of 6-7 percent in attendance that season. This time, fans played more of a waiting game to see if the NHL would return, he said.
The lockout was finally settled in early January. With the NHL set to resume play, the Falcons knew they would lose players.
Six were called up for Columbus' brief training camp. At least some of those players would remain once the games began, with others possibly returning to Springfield.
With all AHL teams similarly affected, it was impossible to predict which clubs would be affected more than others. All of the other factors affecting Falcons crowds have been well-documented.
Landon said ticket prices ($20 for a full adult ticket, $13 for children) are on the low end of the AHL scale, but they still seem significant to a struggling local market.
The AHL's Northeast corridor is especially plagued by low attendance, and Springfield is not immune. On New Year's Day, the Falcons ranked 27th among 30 teams in crowd average, despite a first-place team that was competing for the best record in the Eastern Conference.
Landon has been the designated spokesman for team owner Charles Pompea, a resident of Jupiter, Fla., who bought the Falcons in 2010. Early in 2012, Pompea demonstated his commitment to Springfield with two-year commitments to the Columbus Blue Jackets (the Falcons' NHL affiliate) and the MassMutual Center.
Those deals expire at the end of the 2013-14 season. The Falcons have set an unofficial target of 4,500 fans per game to ensure survival in Springfield.
As of Jan. 1, their average was 3,516. It lagged well below both their own target and the AHL average of 5,387.
The Falcons are counting on larger crowds in the second half of the season. Springfield's won-lost record after three months was its best since the 1990s, and that should help.
On Jan. 5, they defeated Providence 4-2 before 6,497 fans. It was Springfield's biggest crowd of the season, and while group sales accounted for a good part of the crowd, a healthy walkup was also encouraging.
Landon insists that Pompea does not want to move or sell the team if he can possibly avoid it. Crowds such as Jan. 5 are not only welcomed, but necessary.
"It's too early (to make decisions), but we are assessing how we're doing,'' Landon said in late December.
"There have been discussions between Charlie and myself to assess where we are. There is plenty of time to take a look, but there is a timeline and we have to be fair to Columbus.''
The timeline hits a major interval at the end of this season. Landon said the Falcons cannot enter the final year of their arena lease and Columbus affiliation without some idea of their future.
Landon said the franchise has received numerous offers to sell to interests that would move the club. All have been rebuffed, and the team is assured of playing in Springfield through the 2013-14 season.
No guarantees exist beyond that, however.
As for the present, the AHL standings in January begged an obvious question. After a decade as one of the worst teams in the league, is it just coincidence that the Falcons were among the best in a year the NHL was closed by a lockout?
Springfield's roster featured a handful of players who would have been playing for Columbus in a normal year. Landon said that talent infusion applied to every other AHL team as well.
He hoped fans understood that while the NHL labor stalemate saddened all true hockey fans, it dramatically improved the AHL product, in Springfield and elsewhere.
"It's always been a great league. It became even greater with the influx of NHL caliber players,'' Landon said.
"Every team is good. There has been phenomenal quality on every roster.''
Landon said that whatever bitterness was felt by hockey fans toward the NHL lockout has not created a backlash against the sport, at least at the AHL level.
He also said the lockout created better media exposure for the AHL, which did not have to compete with the sport's major league for coverage.
Springfield has had pro hockey in almost uninterrupted fashion since 1936. In 1994, Landon and his former Springfield Kings teammate, Wayne LaChance, organized the Falcons after the former franchise, the Indians, was sold and moved to Worcester.
Nearly two decades later, a winning start and the NHL lockout gave the Falcons some impetus. Those opportunities are competing against economic uncertainty on both the local and national levels, which will likely have a greater impact than the end of the lockout.
There is an institutional challenge as well. As interwoven as AHL hockey has been to the culture of Springfield, the Falcons' storyline has been relentlessly dominated by attendance, not wins and losses.
Even with a high-flying playoff contender, that remains the case today. Landon is guardedly optimistic, but he hopes fans don't make the mistake of taking the franchise for granted, just because it's survived so long.
"For Charlie and for all of us, this is a business, not a hobby. We have to look at it from a business standpoint,'' Landon said.
"Charlie is optimistic, but crowds cannot stay at current numbers. They have to get better, and we think they will.''