Okay, just so we're clear.  The Ottawa Senators are doomed to failure and face inevitable relocation because there has been a 7% decline in average attendance over the first 10 games of a 41 game home schedule following a non-playoff year in the shittiest economy since the Depression, and anyone who argues differently is either a member of the cuckolded local media or an insecure fanboy apologist who should be looked upon as one would a teenaged girl and not be taken seriously.

Oh, and the owner of the team doesn't really care because he's secretly plotting to move the team to Mississauga anyway.

That about cover it?  Have I properly captured the gist of your argument, Neate?  Yeah, thought so.  With all due respect, and at the risk of being labelled a hysterical teenaged girl, you're full of shit.

Jump to the why.

Point:

There's a malaise in Hockey Country, no question. Ottawa Senators attendance is down more than 1,100 fans per game compared to the same point last season. (The average is 1,191 after Tuesday's game vs. Edmonton.) Take a look around the next time you're out, in a non-sports context. You could shoot a cannon through a Tim Hortons during the noon rush and not hit anyone wearing a Sens hat or hoodie in some parts of town.

Counterpoint:

An interesting opening gambit.  To recap, because the groundlings aren't festooned in team colours during their work-a-day hours, it naturally follows that they no longer support the team.  An interesting argument I will be sure to raise the next time I go to a Deputy Minister's meeting in my Jamie Baker jersey.

Point:

At the very least, though, the Senators' fall from grace is an issue. Will anyone write about it in this town? In Ottawa, make the barest inference the hockey team's doing poorly and you'll taste hemlock in your chicken shawarma. You're either a naysayer, a hater or a Leafs fan — theres always a label small minds fall back on. Plausible deniability, don't you know.

Counterpoint:

I would refer you to your own responses in your own comment section good sir.

Point:

Some mental red flags went off in October when there were 2,000 empty seats for a home game vs. the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

Counterpoint:

Um...not to rain on your badly planned parade, but that game fell on Thanksgiving Monday.  While I can't speak for anyone else, the Second Coming itself wouldn't have torn me away from my God given right to tryptophan and stuffing.  Oh, and seeing my family was kind of cool too.

Point:

All told, the Sennies are down an average of 1,141 fans from the same point as last season (from 19,484 to 18,343 after nine home dates). Late last night, you could have gone on the team's website and reserved four 100-level tickets for Tuesday's home game vs. Edmonton without having to sit behind the net, even with the game a little more than 36 hours away.

Counterpoint:

"Sennies"?  Really?  Yikes.  Anyhoo...since when has 100 level tickets become the benchmark by which a team's success is measured?  Those unpurchased tickets you are so eager to point to as further proof that The End Is Nigh were priced at $160.00 each.  Forgetting the usual "family of four" trotted out as the statistical benchmark for affordability, this means that unless I was willing to go alone, take a bus to the game, eat nothing and drink water, it's easily a $600 dollar night to watch a November game against an equally mediocre Western team I don't much care about, not to mention the only Western team in a homestand that sees the Sens play 6 of 7 on SBP ice.  That said, I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't have been able to squeeze one more fan into the 300s with a shoehorn and Bob Cole's pommade.

Point:

It would be glib to say this points to a downward spiral that will end with the franchise becoming the Mississauga Senators between now and the next time the Leafs make the playoffs. To be clear, it's nowhere near that point. (Granted, that might explain why the Eunibomber lashed out at Jim Ballsillie back in the summer when he was trying to move a team into Southern Ontario.)

Counterpoint:

The classic "I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin'."  So, according to you, The Emperor was angered, not because Jimmy Balls publicly labelled him as a crook, but because RIMjob somehow ruined his super secret plot to move the team to a strip mall off the 407.  Gotcha.

Point:

Most sports consumers in any city are fluid in their tastes. It's the nature of the beast, not matter how it angers the diehards who are there for all 82 games, since getting a life is not an option (GAC)

Counterpoint:

Ah, the first personal attack against the fans.  I try to catch every game I can, either on t.v. or at the rink, which usually works out to between 70 and 75 games per season.  I am blessed with a good job, a good home and a loving wife.  My weekends are filled with dinner with friends or family, errands, housework, and all of the usual mundane things that make up most people's lives.  When I'm not doing any of those things, yes, it's true, I'm either watching a game or writing about it here.  To say that because of that I am a lifeless loser is quite frankly offensive, and you can kindly go fuck yourself.

Point:

This is one of the few places where a team could even use a slogan as militaristic as "Sens Army" and "A Force United" (which some culture-jamming bloggers altered to "A Farce United" last season) without getting some media outcry.

Counterpoint:

I'm sorry, are you new?  The "militaristic" slogan originated from the fans as not only a play on the Roman Legion theme running through the entire organization from the very beginning, but also as a response to myopic Leaf fans who deigned to label themselves as a "Nation".  It was then co-opted by the team, not the other way around.  And as far as those "culture jammers" go, well, I was one of them.  A little credit would have been nice.

Point:

When the CFL comes back, people will attend because Roger Greenberg, Bill Shenkman, John Ruddy, Jeff Hunt and whoever becomes mayor after Legal Suit Larry O'Brien say they should. The culture is that top-down.

Counterpoint:

I moved to Ottawa in 1990.  I was a Rider season ticket holder from '91 to '96, and again during the Renegade years (Southsider for life IN DA HOUSE!).  When the CFL comes back, people will attend because this time, the league knows better than to foist shitty management and congenital idiot owners on a very knowledgeable fan base.  We're not fucking lemmings.

Point:

Institutionalized NIMBYism (in the form of the National Capital Commission) eventually led to the Senators building an arena way out yonder in Kanata in the mid-1990s, far from the city's population core.

Counterpoint:

Here's where the author betrays his age, and hence blows any credibility he may have had right out of the water.  A modicum of research would have told you that the NCC had absolutely nothing to do with the location of the then Palladium other than not allowing it to be built where God and most right thinking fans wanted it: Lebretton Flats.  SBP is where it is today because the owners of the team (Terrace Investments...a real estate firm...get it??) owned all the land around the rink and wanted to make a killing on the development of that land.  The reason it didn't happen?  The Ontario government, elected half-way through construction and led by everybody's favourite pinko trough pig, Bob Rae, kneecapped them the second they came into office.  Think the Leafs ever had to build and pay for their own highway off ramp?

Point:

As for the Senators organization, as someone who's interested in successful group dynamics and leaderships — call it compensation for some career-related issues — one does wonder who keeps Melnyk in line. (This is speculative, to be sure.) Former GM John Muckler and former president Roy Mlakar were old-time hockey guys. One can imagine them telling Melnyk to shut up and that the only thing he knows about ice is that it's needed to make diaquiris.

Counterpoint:

Actually, no.  No I can't imagine anybody telling Melnyk to shut up (and as an astute observer of group dynamics and "leaderships", you should know that).  When was the last time you walked into your bosses office and told him to shut up?  And as far as the acumen of "old-time hockey guy" John Muckler goes, he was such a genius that he decimated the entire farm system for a last run at personal glory before The Bryan was brought in to clean up his mess.  We're only now starting to see any hope at all.  Again, and I can't stress this enough...research.

Point:

Deny, deny, deny, all you want, but the Senators have some issues off the ice (as for on the ice, let's leave that to the professional sportswriters)...It will get harder to ignore if the Senators keep sliding. No one can stand here in 2009 and tell you where the NHL will have teams in 2019. Just don't be too smug.

Counterpoint:

Yashin.  Hasek.  Emery.  Redden.  Heatley.  I'm rather certain we know from "issues off the ice".  Hell, that's not even counting the bankruptcy and ownership changes.  I'm not sure when anyone, anywhere has denied anything, your broad, glib, and uneducated brush notwithstanding, but I will stand here in 2009 and tell you, unequivocally, and without any ambiguity that the Ottawa Senators will have a team in 2019.  And in 2029.  And far beyond that.  I'm sorry if that disappoints you, Neate.

After seventeen years, I'm tired.  I'm tired of having to defend ourselves as fans.  I'm tired of misinformed jackasses telling me I'm an idiot for feeling this way.  But most of all, I'm tired of having to justify the very existence of Ottawa Senators.

It's been seventeen years.  Deal with it.

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