The Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) plays in everybody-knows-everybody towns and has declining attendance.

To help put butts in seats, I drew on a few insights:

1) Live hockey’s better when you can sit close to the action, but pro-level tickets like that are expensive.

2) To folks in small-town USA, NHL players aren’t relatable.

3) The players don’t get paid much, so hockey is rarely their full-time gig.