As a lifelong hockey fan from western New York, I’m happy to have ended up living and working in an area that’s embracing the greatest game on ice.
Since the preseason, I believed this would be the year when the Tampa Bay Lightning ended up hoisting sports’ coolest trophy, the Stanley Cup, in June. So when the team made the playoffs, I noticed there was a lot more interest in hockey here in Plant City than usual.
This is good.
For those of you who have actually gained a new appreciation for the game beyond the hype of a local team doing big things and plan to stick around through thick and thin, I need to clear something up for you: The Lightning organization may not think as highly of you as you want to believe.
How is this possible considering that enough fans showed up to Amalie Arena this season to put the Bolts in the top 10 for attendance? The answer is something that, on the outside, appears to have nothing to do with you.
The rules the team implemented for the Chicago series — the one that bans Blackhawks fans from wearing team logos and colors in 1,400 club-level seats, and the one that limits ticket sales to cardholders with Florida ZIP codes — are so petty it’s almost physically painful.
“During the playoff run, we’ve done everything we can to make Amalie Arena a great home environment for our team and our fans,” Bill Wickett, Lightning executive vice president of communication, told the Chicago Tribune in a June 2 story. “We’re going to keep doing that, and we hope people understand.”
This isn’t anything new to the NHL as many teams implement similar procedures (or have in the past). But they’re teams that have historically had trouble putting butts in seats because the local demographics simply aren’t as hockey-friendly as, say, small-market Buffalo. The Nashville Predators aren’t a bad ticket most nights, but it appears that the people in the area don’t always get the memo.
But Tampa, despite being the butt of many “relocation to Quebec” jokes for many years, doesn’t have attendance problems at the moment. Why Wickett and the organization would need to create a “great home environment” for fans that already seem to have no problem going to Amalie is beyond me. Do they just not want people to have to put up with the Blackhawks fans?
I can see why egos would run amok with Chicago fans in attendance, as they’ve had plenty of success to brag about in the last half-decade, but they’re far from the most annoying in the game (cough, Toronto, cough). And there are many Blackhawks fans who would pay good money for some of those 1,400 seats they’re not allowed, and many more who probably just want to see their favorite team in action for, maybe, for the first time in a while, but can’t because of childish ZIP code restrictions.
The responses the team has offered to criticisms such as mine, mostly through social media, has essentially been, “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”
Meanwhile, Chicago’s mayor sent an open invitation for Lightning fans to go visit Chicago and watch a game at the United Center, and the general consensus is that the Blackhawks are acting like a team that’s been in this position before.
Grow up, and act like you’ve been there before: That’s what I would say to most other teams who stoop to this level of pettiness. But the Lightning have actually been here in all, or most, of our lifetimes. And general manager Steve Yzerman knows that you don’t need to judge people by the color of their apparel in the playoffs. The Detroit Red Wings never did anything like this before, during or after his illustrious playing career. What the heck is going on here?
It must be, then, that the Lightning organization doesn’t trust you to support the team in person. Maybe they think that if you don’t show up, the Blackhawks fans will, and that those fans will turn the arena into United Center South. The players don’t care about that. No athlete worth his or her salt cares about what’s going on outside of the playing field and bench.
And if the Blackhawks fans don’t give their money to the Lightning, a local business, is it a guarantee that Lightning fans will show up in their place? No well-run business would turn away paying customers like this unless it had Apple money, which the Lightning and every American sports team do not.
I urge you all to go to any hockey games you can, as I believe it’s the only one of the big four North American sports with a considerably better live product than the television experience.
Maybe more of the younger readers will be inspired to put on some skates and go somewhere with it, like Plant City native Clint Walden has.
And the Lightning is a fun team to watch. It’s built to score goals like Oregon football scores touchdowns, and skate with as much speed and finesse as the Ducks move the ball with.
But, please, don’t stick up for the kind of front office culture that would bar you from attending a Stanley Cup Finals game in a Western Conference arena under the same petty regulations.