NHL Attendance - Canada is tops in the league

There are currently seven out of 30 NHL teams in Canada but these teams have been consistently selling out all of their games.  In the last eight seasons only one Canadian team has not effectively sold out every game, that being Ottawa.

Season     Van   Calgary Edmon  Toronto Ottawa Montrl Winnipeg
2013/14 100.0 100.0  99.9 103.0  93.7 100.0 100.0
2012/13 100.2 100.0 100.0 103.2 101.3 100.0 100.0
2011/12 102.5 100.0 100.0 103.7 101.1 100.0 100.0
2010/11 100.3 100.0 100.0 102.9  99.3 100.0 
2009/10 102.1 100.0 100.0 102.5  98.8 100.0
2008/09 101.1 100.0 100.0 102.7 105.0 100.0
2007/08 101.1 100.0 100.0 103.4 107.1 100.0
2006/07 101.1 100.0 100.0 103.7 104.7 100.0

        Teams that sold out
Season  Canadian  American
2013/14   5          9
2012/13   7          9
2011/12   7          9
2010/11   5          7
2009/10   5          6
2008/09   6          6
2007/08   6          6
2006/07   6          5

Not a single US team has sold out every one of the last eight seasons but over the same time four Canadian teams have.

         Sold Out Seasons
Team    2006/07 - 2013/14
Calgary        8
Montreal       8
Toronto        8
Vancouver      8
Edmonton       7
Philadelphia   7
Pittsburgh     7
Chicago        6
Minnesota      6
Rangers        6
San Jose       6
Ottawa         5
Boston         4
Detroit        4
Los Angeles    3
Washington     3
Winnipeg       3
Buffalo        2
St Louis       1
Tampa Bay      1

Clearly there is a good case for Canadian teams to have larger arenas to accommodate the crowds.   I think each of the Canadian teams could build new arenas with seating for 23,000 to 25,000.  In the case of Vancouver this would be about 5,000 more people per game, which is 205,000 more regular season tickets sold or about $15,000,000 to $17,000,000 more in annual revenues.   If we include pre-season and playoffs this rises to about $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 per year.   

Winnipeg only has a capacity of 15,004 at their arena.   Building a new one with 23,000 capacity would allow for 8,000 more tickets to be sold per game.   This should be worth an extra $20,000,000 to the team per year.   It would pay for the costs of a new arena in just over a decade on the extra hockey attendance alone.   

If I were Calgary, Edmonton or Winnipeg I would look at building a purpose build outdoor hockey stadium to use for a reasonable number of games each season.   The various outdoor stadium games are less than ideal because the action is too far from the crowd.   It should be possible to build an outdoor hockey rink that could seat more like 30,000 people.  Maybe you could get Saskatoon to build one and have three prairie teams play two games against each other there each season.