Blind squirrel, nut, you know the drill

On the first of January, I made a number of predictions, some rash, some less so.

These two, however, seem to have been fairly close to the mark:

The Blazers finished 35-24-5, third in the Northwest division, and drew 275,493 paying customers, averaging 8,609, first in the Central Hockey League.

The attendance figure was skewed slightly by last Saturday's game at the Ford Center (which Amarillo won, 4-3): the first 10,000 adults through the gate got a Powerball ticket, and paid attendance was reported as 17,826.

If nothing else, this demonstrates pretty convincingly that the presence of an NBA team has no adverse effect on the hockey crowds: the Blazers averaged 8,245 per game last year while finishing third in their division. I had thought it might cost at most three or four percentage points.