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As you note, there's a problem with trying to draw conclusions from just 6 years of data - especially since some of the factors are reasonably explainable. Pittsburgh had Crosby, the Red Wings have been successful for the prior 14-15 years and developed a broad following around the league, and the Thrashers and Blue Jackets have been generally terrible and had little to no "star" power outside of Kovalchuk and Nash respectively. On the other hand, as you try to include more years you run into the problem of shifting parameters, and that becomes more difficult to quantify accurately for some variables.
There's also the "causation/correlation" problem. I wouldn't have suspected attendance would decline when the opposing team takes more penalties; intuitively, it would seem that the more penalties the opposition takes, the better the chances of the home team winning - which would seem to drive an increase in attendance. Is "penalties taken by the opposition" really something fans take into consideration when deciding to purchase a ticket, or is that just something that's in the data without a real explanation? |
