The Penguins may have been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs but Pittsburgh still managed to come out near the top of a national ranking of the best cities for hockey fans.

Pittsburgh came in third, behind Boston and Detroit, in a ranking by WalletHub, a Washington, D.C.-based personal finance website.

Cities were scored on 21 criteria, including the number of Stanley Cup wins, franchise value, ticket prices, attendance and NCAA hockey teams.

Pittsburgh’s ranking in the future will be affected by the decision by Robert Morris University in May to discontinue its hockey program for financial reasons.

Pittsburgh tied for first place in fan engagement with Sunrise, Florida, home of the Florida Panthers. Fan engagement was calculated by adding the number of Twitter followers to the number of Facebook “likes” per capita. Way to go you social media influencers!

WalletHub compared 73 U.S. cities with at least one National Hockey League or NCAA Division I Men’s team.

The top 10 cities are:

  1. Boston
  2. Detroit
  3. Pittsburgh
  4. New York
  5. St. Louis
  6. Denver
  7. Newark
  8. Tampa
  9. Chicago
  10. Buffalo

See the full list and the criteria used on the WalletHub website.

For comparison’s sake, Pittsburgh was No. 1 in WalletHub’s ranking of football cities this year. In 2019, it rated baseball cities and ranked Pittsburgh 11th.

Brian brings a passion for Pittsburgh, doughnuts and ice cream to his job as editor. His more than 30 years of journalism experience have taught him the importance of community engagement and a sense of humor.