Study lists Detroit as the country’s top hockey city, seven other Michigan cities make the list

By @StefanKubus –

It seems there’s no doubt that Detroit still proudly carries the Hockeytown nickname.

In a study from WalletHub, Detroit was named the top hockey city in the United States for the second-consecutive year. WalletHub analysts compared 72 U.S. cities across two divisional categories, including NHL and NCAA.

The Motor City wasn’t the only Michigan city to make the list. In fact, Houghton came in at No. 23, Ann Arbor at No. 24, Big Rapids at No. 31, Sault Ste. Marie at No. 41, East Lansing at No. 46, Marquette at No. 51 and Kalamazoo at No. 71.

Houghton and Ann Arbor were also among the top cities for college-hockey fan engagement, as well.

According to WalletHub’s methodology in calculating these ranks:

We evaluated each divisional category using 19 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for hockey fans. The weight for each divisional category is based on its popularity, which we determined by summing the number of “Likes” for all the teams in each category and calculating the proportion that each league represents in total.

We then calculated the total score for each city based on its weighted average across all metrics and used the resulting scores to construct our final ranking.