I've been a season ticket holder for the Devils and Red Bulls for a very long time. Devils attendance issues has been overblown for years. They had more people at their game yesterday to watch a shit team than the amount of people at RBA last night.
Devils attendance has been very solid since moving into the Prudential Center considering how bad they have been most years playing there and the fact they have missed the playoffs 7 times since moving there and only advanced past the 1st round 1 time in 12 seasons there.
You can talk about all the past success but that does nothing to take away from how awful they have been the majority of the time in this new arena.
They have missed the playoffs 6 of the past 7 years and this season has been absolutely horrible but the crowds have been great. Attendance is sitting at 92.4% capacity this year which is amazing considering all their injuries and the fact they have been basically been a minor league team cause of the injuries.
People are coming out to their games, it's just that the midweek mildly attended games against western conference teams that nobody cares about gets overblown into "no fans!"
Here's the Devils capacity per season since moving into the Prudential Center...
18-19 - 92.4% no playoffs
17-18 - 92% 1st round knockout
16-17 - 94% no playoffs
15-16 - 91.3% no playoffs
14-15 - 86.2% no playoffs
13-14 - 88.7% no playoffs
12-13 - 97.1% no playoffs
11-12 - 87.4% lost in the finals
10-11 - 83.08% no playoffs
09-10 - 88.1% 1st round knockout
08-09 - 89.6% 1st round knockout
07-08 - 88.3% 1st round knockout
You aren't completely wrong but the capacity numbers are misleading: a couple of years back the capacity of Pru Center was reduced by about a 1,000 for hockey so judging past numbers vs current numbers is something that really can't be done.