Hockey Tickets

I enjoy watching a live NHL game from time to time. Since I live in the Seattle area, that means driving up to Vancouver, BC to the see Vancouver Canucks. For the previous two seasons, I obtained a few tickets from a friend. This year, I'm entering the hockey ticket pool as a full member. Assuming of course a collective bargaining agreement is reached and that there will be a 2004-2005 NHL hockey season.

The two basic options are: split a pair of season tickets four ways, everybody gets ten pairs; or split a pair of season tickets two ways, a friend and I each get twenty pairs. Obviously, I'm not going to make it to twenty games, so I'll put leftovers up for sale (I've been told it is easy and convenient to do this via a website provided by the Canucks). Which of the two options will happen depends on how many other people enter the ticket pool. Ideally we'll split evenly and everybody will get ten pairs.

Or, not so ideally. Last year, as far as home games, the Canucks had five games on Sunday, seven on Monday, six on Tuesday, five on Wednesday, five on Thursday, two on Friday, and eleven on Saturday. (Yes, I printed out last season's schedule and counted it up!) If we evenly distribute the tickets based on a similar schedule, everybody can expect four tickets from Thursday through Sunday (generally the most convenient games to make), and six from Sunday through Wednesday. So ten pairs really means four games that are easier to attend, and six games that are harder to attend.

Splitting a pair in half means my friend and I get a much better selection of games, but it is also more risky if tickets we can't use or don't want to use don't sell. Here, we'll be motivated somewhat to sell tickets to better teams, after saving a few for ourselves of course. This is fine with me as I don't really care who the opponent is. Sure, division rivalries are fun and so would watching a top team, but what day they play and if the tickets are likely to sell will be the dominant factors.

The final split will become clearer later in the summer, when people start committing by placing deposits.