The tattoo will stay, but Jim Anderson doesn’t wear his Badgers hockey apparel anymore.

Anderson, a longtime fan, sports a permanent reminder of the Wisconsin men’s hockey team in ink on his right bicep. He has a motion W on a puck with the words “2006 NCAA Champions” and the five other national title seasons listed around it.

He said he’s followed the Badgers since the early 1980s and had season tickets for a few years in the early 2000s before moving to Minnesota.

But Anderson used the words “disgusting” and “embarrassing” to describe the program's downturn over the last two seasons, in which the Badgers have won just 10 of 65 games.

“I just don't see how a school like Wisconsin, who’s had success, who has all the resources,” Anderson said, his voice trailing off in a sigh. “The fan support is there if they’d actually win.”

Wisconsin had its worst record in 82 years last season and, despite what some describe as improving play, the team is winding down another losing campaign, with just one conference victory in 16 games. The slide of one of major college hockey’s blue bloods from the top ranks to the basement has frustrated fans and raised questions about what the program needs to do to move forward.

Attendance has reached an all-time low for the Badgers’ 18-season Kohl Center era and season ticket sales have plummeted compared to a decade ago, when coach Mike Eaves had the program at this generation’s peak.

While it is one of only three revenue-producing Badgers sports, men’s hockey has slipped to barely being in the black. According to financial statements, the team’s net profit plummeted from $1.179 million in the 2011-12 school year to just $38,502 in 2014-15.

“We just want a winning team,” said season ticket holder David Tuttle.

Hockey observers generally agree that the Badgers’ fall from college hockey's top tier centers around recruiting. Frequent shifts in the coaching staff may have disrupted relationships with some in the developmental levels, and the team suffered from a talent drain when high-level players left for the pros.

In 2014, the Badgers won the Big Ten playoff championship and claimed a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. The 2010 season included a run to the national championship game and in 2006, they won the NCAA title.

Since that 2013-14 season, the Badgers are 10-42-13, have been outscored by a total of 99 goals and experienced the smallest crowd to watch a Badgers men’s hockey game at the Kohl Center.

After 2013-14, the Badgers lost five of their top six scorers and three of their top four defensemen. Six were seniors; forward Nic Kerdiles gave up his final two seasons to sign a professional contract and defenseman Jake McCabe left one season early.

Eaves conceded that the personnel losses left the team “down in talent” and too young last season, and the result was the most defeats in program history. The Badgers lost their first eight games, later had a 10-game winless stretch and finished the 4-26-5 season with seven losses and a tie in their last eight games.

Eaves’ program has been criticized for waves of senior-dominated or overly young teams. And the results generally have followed the same pattern.

In those banner years — 2006, 2010 and 2014 — the Badgers were a veteran group and saw positive results. In the two seasons that followed each of those winning years, not yet including this season, they have either had a losing record or missed out on the NCAA tournament.

Eaves said he has tried to smooth out those classes since 2006, but having players leave early for the pro ranks throws a wrench into the plans.

“Because we were losing so many guys, we had big holes in our recruiting because of the fact that we had first-round picks that were staying one, two years and were gone,” he said. “We had a legitimate talk and an honest talk where we have to try to strike that balance in terms of, is this kid going to be a one-year, two, three or four? There was talk about trying to balance that out.”

In 2009-10, the Badgers’ corps of six defensemen included five NHL draft picks. All five left school after their junior seasons.

Overall, there were 11 NHL draft picks on that team. That figure has dwindled to five this season. The program shifted its focus somewhat toward players that likely will stay with the team for four years, but it also missed out on some high-profile recruits.

Forward Christian Dvorak gave the Badgers a nonbinding verbal commitment in 2012 and was projected to join the team in 2014. But he backed out to sign with the London Knights of the major junior Ontario Hockey League. A second-round NHL pick by Arizona in 2014, he leads the OHL with 46 goals through 50 games this season.

Brock Boeser decommitted from the Badgers in November 2014 and now is a freshman at North Dakota. The first-round draft pick last summer is second in the country among rookies with 22 goals and has 37 points in 32 games this season.

And goaltender Luke Opilka signed a National Letter of Intent to join the Badgers this season and was projected to be the starter. But he signed with the St. Louis Blues, who picked him in the fifth round last summer, and the Badgers had to scramble to recruit a goalie.

Meanwhile, the rate of players leaving the program early has slowed in recent years, but some don’t see that as a positive sign.

Rob Andringa, a former Badgers defenseman who has been a color analyst on Wisconsin's radio and television broadcasts as well as on the Big Ten Network, said Eaves’ recruiting philosophy changed after 2010 to target more four-year players.

That doesn’t provide the kind of high-end talent that fans want to see, he said.

“I think their philosophy of what they wanted to recruit and who they should recruit backfired on them,” Andringa said.

But Eaves said recruiting highly ranked players that will be targets to be plucked early by NHL teams is a tightrope that needs to be balanced.

“You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don’t,” Eaves said. “If you get all those top-end kids, you’ve got these big holes. And then if you don’t have enough top-end kids then you probably don't have the talent to win at a high level.”

Many around the country are surprised at Wisconsin's record over the last two seasons, said Dave Starman, a college hockey analyst for CBS Sports Network and scout for the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens.

He pointed toward a changing set of assistant coaches as one reason why recruiting relationships have fizzled.

After Eaves was hired to replace 20-year Badgers coach Jeff Sauer in 2002, his staff changed in each of the first four seasons. With Mark Osiecki and Kevin Patrick working together as assistants for a five-year stretch, the Badgers won the 2006 national championship and finished as runners-up in 2010.

Current assistants Luke Strand and JB Bittner were added after Gary Shuchuk and Matt Walsh were fired after last season.

“It’s really hard to be consistently good when your staff is consistently changing,” Starman said. “I think that’s hurt them.”

Jason King, the Wisconsin senior associate athletic director for capital projects and operations who oversees men’s and women’s hockey, said Strand and Bittner have added some new energy to recruiting this season after that was a point of emphasis last year.

“I just think that those guys have been good,” King said. “They’ve brought some new ideas and Mike has been receptive to those ideas. I think that has been a good fit for the program, having those guys come in and breathe some life into recruiting areas.”

As the Badgers try to rebuild the on-ice product, they’re also facing a downturn of support in the seats.

By any measure, the figures show a drastic decline in attendance for games at the Kohl Center this season, furthering a downward trend:

* With two home games remaining Friday and Saturday against Penn State, the average attendance for men’s hockey regular season games is 8,861, 58 percent of capacity and a 19 percent drop over last season.

* 2015-16 will have the lowest average attendance in 18 seasons for games and the first under 10,000.

* Since the all-time high average of 14,430 in the 2006-07 season, attendance is down 39 percent.

* Combining two packages offered, season ticket sales fell 23 percent over last season and 52 percent since 2006-07.

This season started with the lowest attendance ever for a regular season game at the Kohl Center: 6,467 for a game against Northern Michigan on Oct. 9. That game also produced the fewest number of people in the seats as measured by the number of tickets scanned at the gates, at 3,840.

Through the first 16 regular season games this season, the average for fans in the seats was 6,088, down 19 percent from last season. That means 31 percent of tickets purchased or distributed for games have gone unused; for the nine previous seasons it was 26 percent.

Jeffrey White has had season tickets since 2002 but he said he’s considering not renewing the Friday night package in section 108 that he now shares with his brother-in-law.

“I recognize that this is entertainment, and you only have X amount of dollars for entertainment,” he said. “And I’m not getting the bang for the buck, so to speak. The fan experience is so much reduced from what it was even a few years ago.”

Tickets cost $24 for the first two levels of the Kohl Center and $20 for the third. Season packages work out to $20 per game.

White said he wants to go to a game with the expectation that the Badgers will at least be competitive.

“I don't go to the games anymore with the expectation ... that we’re going to do anything but embarrass ourselves against the better teams like we did against Minnesota this year,” he said.

The Badgers suffered 4-0 and 9-2 losses to the Golden Gophers in a series at the Kohl Center in January, the worst two-game beating by their rivals for a series in Madison in 59 tries.

“I’ve lost the luster, the excitement,” White said. “And it’s more than just, well, we’re losing. It’s that in a lot of games, we’re not competitive.”

Three years ago, Tuttle scaled back from a full-season ticket package to just getting tickets for the first games of series, saying he felt less compelled to be at the Kohl Center every night.

He said hockey has hit a lull in terms of interest from casual fans.

“You combine that with just the marketing juggernaut that is basketball and football — and not just at UW, everywhere, and supported by the networks, too — I feel like it’s kind of this perfect storm where it continues to just slip further and further off the radar,” Tuttle said.

“And then we have a competitiveness problem, and everybody’s looking where their dollars are going and it just seems like it’s this really vicious cycle, a confluence of a ton of things that have really blown this up.”

There’s a perception that fans haven’t taken to the Big Ten Conference as a hockey entity. After 44 seasons in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, the Badgers moved to the Big Ten when the multi-sport conference’s hockey league formed in 2013.

Advocates for the change believed playing against schools like Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State would attract more casual Wisconsin athletics fans than games against former WCHA foes Denver, Colorado College and Michigan Tech.

“In my opinion, it hasn’t really panned out,” White said.

Beyond the fan perspective, the Big Ten has struggled competitively compared to other conferences.

The six hockey-playing Big Ten teams had a .500 record in nonconference games this season, ranking fourth of the six Division I men’s conferences. There’s a chance that, for the second straight season, only one team from the league will make the 16-team NCAA tournament.

“I just think it’s taking some time,” said Paul Caponigri, a former Ohio State player who’s a hockey analyst for the Big Ten Network. “I’d be lying if I said I thought this is where we’d be right now overall in the whole grand scheme of the league.”

And rivalries haven't yet taken shape to replace ones that were given up as conferences shifted.

“Is Minnesota and Michigan a rivalry? Not really,” Starman said. “Is Wisconsin-Michigan State a rivalry? In basketball it is. So I don’t think that by taking the natural rivals that these schools and their fan bases are so used to away from them and making games against North Dakota (count for rankings instead of conference points), I think you have absolutely killed 50 years of laying groundwork of what’s made college hockey great.”

Eaves said he hopes the Big Ten’s future brings a feeling like Wisconsin once had with its former conference.

“We’re not naive as coaches to the fact that we know the Big Ten has to expand in order to get back that special thing that the WCHA had,” he said. “The six teams is a starting point, but in order for us to grow our product, I think that we need to get a couple more teams and spice it up a little bit.”

Arizona State started a Division I program this season and is in search of a conference. The Big Ten had a policy against inviting members not from the conference as a whole for single-sport affiliation, but broke that to add Johns Hopkins for lacrosse.

Other Big Ten schools like Nebraska have been mentioned as possibilities to start up a varsity team and add to the league’s men's hockey program.

Some fans sound like they won’t be won over by the Big Ten regardless of the league’s makeup and are skeptical of an attempt to appeal to a wider fan base.

“College hockey is a niche sport,” Anderson said. “You either like it or you don’t. The average fan got used to seeing the Colorado Colleges, the Denvers, the North Dakotas and they don’t care about this Big Ten. They don’t.”

The decline in attendance has cut into the revenue produced by the men’s hockey program.

According to athletic department financial statements presented to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, ticket sales accounted for $2.49 million in the 2014-15 season, down from $3.23 million three seasons earlier.

The men’s hockey program paid more in 2014-15 for scholarships, staff salaries, recruiting and travel than it did three seasons earlier.

In putting together the budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year, associate athletic director for business operations Mario Morris said he was “a little conservative” on men's hockey ticket sales.

After the Athletic Board meeting last month where the budget was approved, athletic director Barry Alvarez was asked about the recent ticket revenue downturn for men’s hockey.

“You don’t like for it to happen, but hockey is not going to make or break us,” he told The Capital Times. “We don't like that, obviously. We’re not satisfied with that. But we’ve got to keep that big stadium (Camp Randall) full and we’ve got to keep the Kohl Center full” for men's basketball.

The next week, Alvarez attempted to clarify some of that statement in an email sent to men’s hockey season ticket holders.

“When I said ‘hockey is not going to make or break us,’ I was referring to our budget and the goals of the department to maintain a balanced budget,” Alvarez said in the email. “I should have made that more clear. In no way was I referencing the competitive goals of the department.

"We are committed to reestablishing Wisconsin men’s hockey as one of the elite programs in the country. I know and respect the great tradition that has been established by the student-athletes who have come through the program and the tremendous support we receive from a very loyal fan base.”

After the disastrous 2014-15 season, Alvarez told the Wisconsin State Journal that Eaves needed to “sit down and tear that program apart and figure out where you can improve and what you have to do.”

The Badgers are again in last place in the Big Ten this season and their 6-16-8 overall record is in the bottom quarter nationally, but Eaves said he has seen the progress from his team that he was hoping for.

He said he told King before the season that the team was going to be even younger than it was last season, but the team’s speed and overall talent level has increased.

“I very much like the direction we’re going,” Eaves said.

King backed up Eaves on the progress that the team has shown, even if the wins haven’t come.

“The reality is, though, that we have been in every game virtually right into the third period,” King said. “Last year, that wasn’t necessarily the case. We have struggled to put teams away and to get over that hump, and that’s something that we really have to overcome.”

Eaves acknowledged that there have been calls for a change in the program’s leadership but said he can’t worry about that.

He has three years left after this season on a contract that has a base salary of $236,500 and, with benefits, paid $414,999 in 2014-15, according to documents.

King said his evaluation is a year-round process that culminates after the season with a formal review and a meeting with Alvarez to have “frank discussions” about the program and staff.

Eaves is well-respected around the game as a solid coach of hockey fundamentals who has helped prepare 26 players for NHL careers.

“Mike did not forget how to coach,” Starman said.

But Eaves is squarely on the hot seat as his 14th season coaching his alma mater winds down.

“It would be a big slap in the face if they continue to see this program slide like it is without addressing it,” Andringa said. “No doubt there’s a lot of alumni that would be very disappointed.”

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