Nobody's saying it but what they're not saying says a lot.

If you go to a Blues game, as I sometimes get to, you'll see a lot of empty seats. Maybe the place is only 1/3 full. It's so embarassing tha they no longer do the "guess the attendance" game, because the numbers would be too small to see on the jumbotron.

OK, so we had a lot of baseball going on, and for a while, that may have been why fans stayed away. Baseball is over; fans are still gone.

Maybe it's because the games are midweek? I was there last Saturday; stands were only 1/3 full.

Maybe it's happening all across the NHL? No. I'm watching the Blues at Dallas and their stands are full. Mid week. In a town that plays every other sport too.

So what's gone wrong? They hiked the seat prices up 20 dollars a game. That's a lot of money for fans to pay to see a team that was decimated by the previous owner, to sell to a new owner who is doing marginal things to get fans back.

A new scoreboard. Woo hoo. A ribbon board around the rink. It shows advertizing all through the game.

When the baseball strike was over, the Cardinals did handstands to get fans back. Ozzie did backflips. Lots of gimmicks, giveaways, cool things to get you to the games. And it worked. And we just won a world series in a new stadium.

What has David Checketts really done for the fans? How much more of this can we take?