With Pizza! Pizza! getting Stale, Wings need new marketing Direction
Bill over Abel to Yzerman has a good article on the difficulties the Red Wings have experienced selling out both their playoff games last year and at this year’s season opener. Now it could simply be the fans didn’t want to show up since Detroit wasn’t going to show off a brand new President’s trophy - although they found an old one stashed away in their swag closet and handed it over to Mighty Duckie Mark Mowers for his vital contributions to the 2005-06 squad.
The initial marketing campaign was greeted with derision but this just might be a case of Mike Illitch not opting to use his marketing team from Little Caeser’s. Perhaps the Red Wings organization is still operating under the mistaken impression that we live in a world where two pizzas for one price is what the people want. They need to come up with their Hot ‘n Ready marketing plan of one large pizza with one topping for one low price. How exactly that translates to hockey is beyond me, but it seems to be working for Little Caesar’s.
The Wings obviously understand how to put a very good product on the ice, regardless of whether or not there’s a salary cap in place. Now they need to figure out how to market it and get more people to buy their product. The Tigers experienced an immediate bump when they moved to Comerica, even though the product on the field was lacking at the time. So it could be as simple as building a new hockey barn. Hopefully the Wings are kicking around lots of other ways to gain fans.
Moving along, after Jiri Hudler’s shootout goal he has plenty of teammates suggesting he needs to SHOOT THE FREAKING PUCK. Hoodlum didn’t register a single shot on goal during the game the other night, but he made his one shot during the shootout count.
The guy who is likely to captain the team at some point in the future is one of those guys in Hudler’s ear telling him to shoot more:
“He has the same problem as me, he wants to pass a little bit too much, but he has to be the shooter,” Zetterberg said. “We’ve been telling him that and he knows that, too. He’s got a great shot.”
That’s been evident at various levels.
“He led the Czech League in scoring when he was a kid. He was right up there in the American Hockey League in scoring (third in the league with Grand Rapids in 2005-06),” Babcock said. “He’s always scored and he’s way better defensively and way more competitive than people think. He does a good job on the forecheck. We just got to keep him working.”
As I mentioned yesterday, he seems like a good fit riding shotgun alongside Hank. Hank is the most dangerous goal-scorer on the squad, so I think Hudler can play off of that, both setting Hank up and making use of the open ice that’s likely to be there when teams focus on trying to stop Zetterberg. I think he has a good shot at scoring 25 goals this season.
Matt over at On the Wings has his season preview up! He’s been super-busy with classes during his senior year at the University of Michigan and he told the other Red Wings bloggers it might take him a little bit of time to find the time to post his preview and it’s up now so go over and check out what he has to say.
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Thanks for the link, Dave. When’d you get the new look? I usually read through Google Reader, so I hadn’t stopped by here for a while. I like it!
By the way, I don’t go to UM (I wish!), just a small Christian college in Grand Rapids.
D’oh, sorry about that Matt! I know you and Christy are in college and I recall her talking about where she went to school and for some reason I was under the impression you were both in Ann Arbor.
Thanks for the comment on the new design. The other one was more generic and it was getting a little old so I decided to change it up a bit!