Not NHL, but the Manchester Monarchs (
ECHL) have ceased operations.
I hadn’t been to a game in a long time, but I’ve read that the fan experience was bad, starting with the new ownership saying there’d be no difference between the AHL and the Coast, then raising ticket prices for their first Coast season. Attendance was so bad that they hosted a playoff game at a local rink in Exeter. They might be able to come back in a couple years, but the thinking is they’d need to be a Bruins affiliate with all-new branding.
There’s also a discussion to be had about the city building a 10,000 seat arena. The hockey team is gone, the acoustics drive away a lot of top-end entertainers (or at least it did, I’m willing to be corrected), and it looks like there hasn’t been any investment in the arena since it opened.