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Sure, it’s a little embarrassing to see empty seats at the Canadian Tire Centre when the Ottawa Senators are competing deep into May.

The question is, is this something uniquely related to the 2016-’17 season? Or is there something more fundamental at play that must be addressed in off-season?

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The Senators, of course, have long been burdened by more difficult marketing challenges compared with Canada’s other six NHL franchises. Among them:

It’s the only NHL city with an arena well outside the downtown core. Team founder Bruce Firestone had anticipated the sporting stadium would anchor a major new retail and housing development. The early team owners had also been confident that high-tech would strongly support the franchise. However, politics scuttled the development scheme and the tech industry’s titan, Nortel Networks, went bankrupt, weakening the industry.