Demand for Canucks tickets hits 'all-time low,' broker says

The Vancouver Canucks are apparently establishing new lows when it comes to ticket demand on the secondary market.

"I didn't think it would get any lower than the Mike Keenan years - that's when they moved Trevor (Linden) out and brought in (Mark) Messier," Kingsley Bailey, the manager of local broker Vancouver Ticket, told Postmedia's Stephanie Ip.

Bailey said demand for resale Canucks tickets this season is at an "all-time low," or the lowest it's been since the late 1990s.

"It's got to the point where some ticket holders - they don't even want to go but they don't want to lose their priority number," he said. "So some of my season-ticket holders who were selling partial seasons are now selling me full seasons."

Canucks COO Jeff Stipec told Yip that the season-ticket renewal rate for 2016-17 plummeted to just over 80 percent, down from 97 percent in 2011.

Vancouver sits second-last in the paltry Pacific Division, and the Canucks have the fifth-worst record in the league at 11-12-2 through 25 games.

Things seemed similarly grim in the fall of 2014, when Bailey said there was "no demand" for Canucks resale tickets. The club missed the postseason in 2013-14 after five consecutive playoff runs, which included a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2011.

After being eliminated by the Calgary Flames in the first round of the 2015 playoffs, Vancouver missed the postseason again last spring and doesn't appear likely to be playoff-bound in 2017.