There's been a lot of press attention to the fact that the Detroit Red Wings haven't sold out most of their games during this year's playoffs.

It wasn't that long ago when a ticket to an NHL playoff game in "Hockeytown USA" was tough to come by, but now there's plenty of good seats available for the Wings home games and you don't have to hurry to get tickets.

A lot of reasons have been bandied about. Some blame the league for the schedule that keeps the Wings, an Eastern team, trapped in the Western Conference. Of course, that wasn't a major complaint when the Colorado Avalanche were in their prime and the natural feud between the two clubs fuelled some classic playoff and regular season battles.

Some blame the so-called "new NHL" which favors offense over defense, but that one doesn't hold water since the Wings have always been blessed with great offensive talent and this season (Datysuk, Zetterberg, Lidstrom) is no different.

Some blame the officiating, but of course that's just an easy scapegoat since on-ice officials have always been singled out for ruining the game long before this year.

Some blame the division the Wings play in, which contains woeful Chicago, Columbus and St. Louis, but of course, those teams have been in that division for years. The problem may be that due to the league's new scheduling that pits division rivals against each other more often, the Wings are facing too many weak teams, but that really doesn't seem like much of a reason to drive fans away.

Some blame the lockout and the current CBA, which caps salaries and forces big market teams like Detroit to share revenue with weaker rivals, thus shrinking the Wings payroll and making it tough for them to retain their best players or bid competitively for free agents. There's even a suggestion that Wings fans are upset that their team was singled out as among the "bad guy" teams that drove up salaries under the old CBA.

The new cap did cost the Wings popular veteran forward Brendan Shanahan last summer, but that's the only player of note they lost.

Since the lockout ended the Wings have successfully retained Lidstrom and Datsyuk and while they couldn't afford to bid for the top UFAs last summer, they were able to bring in affordable talent, like Dominik Hasek and Danny Markov. And the CBA hasn't affected their ability to trade for talent, like their trade deadline acquisitions of Todd Bertuzzi and Kyle Calder. And the cap restrictions hasn't prevented them from developing young talent within their system.

Based on the Red Wings finishing first overall in the Western Conference for two straight seasons, the CBA obviously hasn't adversely affected them as much as their old rivals, the Avalanche.

As for the perception of their club as wild spenders under the old CBA, I haven't met a Wings fan yet who cared about their team's image in that regard.

So why the empty seats in Hockeytown?

Ticket prices.

As the response to this Detroit Free Press column on the subject makes plain, the biggest complaint from the denizens of Hockeytown is the expensive price for tickets.

The city of Detroit is in the midst of a recession, and as more than one Wings fan made clear, that's made it harder for fans to afford the price of attending the games.

There's also a perception that Wings owner Mike Illich doesn't care, that he's impervious to the complaints of the team's fans over the cost of the tickets.

The Wings also aren't the only game in town anymore, now having to compete with baseball's Tigers and basketball's Pistons, two teams that had once fallen on hard times but have now rebounded into contenders in their respective sports.

Ultimately, it's the ticket prices that are keeping the fans away from the Joe, and robbing "Hockeytown" of its usual post-season buzz.

The Wings might regain that buzz later in the post-season should they advance to the Conference Finals or the Stanley Cup finals, but even so, ownership can't ignore the complaints of their once die-hard fans, who have made their displeasure known by the sea of empty seas at the Joe Louis arena this spring.

If the Wings want to bring back their fans, they've got to reduce their ticket prices. Otherwise, they'd better get used to those empty seats.