Of course all of sports has ALWAYS been a revolving door, most careers are short. NHL has an advantage of being a helmeted league, outside the star players giving lots of interviews most fans have no idea what most of their players look like. It’s an anonymous sport. And in general people root for the name on the front, not the back, every Yankees owner has known that.
Hardly. Most NHL fans I know could have identified every player on their favorite team without any names or numbers on their uniforms. Historically, hockey was the one sport that had very few casual fans.
Most careers of top players in sports are at least as long as the time it takes a child first getting interested in sports to reach the age of 18.
When I was young I followed the New York Giants from their abysmal years of the late 1970s through their success of the late 1980s. The roster changed a bit every year, but that championship team was built through years of solid drafting and some key free agent signings from the USFL.
If they lost Lawrence Taylor to free agency in 1984 and then signed Joe Montana as their starting QB in 1985, I'd say my interest in that team would have disappeared.
And in general people root for the name on the front, not the back, every Yankees owner has known that.
Yankee fans root for winning teams. That's why their attendance has never returned to its peak in the new Yankee Stadium back in 2010 -- the first year after they won their last World Series.