Well for last year the cheapest seats were going for $25-$30, but those were the nose bleed sections. You can get nose bleeds that are in the front row for $40 that are really good. Hopefully they will not raise the prices because of the Stanley Cup and this stupid lockout.
Cheapest seats here in Vancouver are around $80. Then you have to pay something like $25 for parking. I don't think I paid for my own tickets for the last 15 years. It's just too expensive for me. The last few times I went, I won tickets once and the other times, I got them as a gift from someone wealthier than I. I love watching NHL live, but I'm not willing to pay such high prices. It seems to be cheaper to fly to Phoenix to watch the Canucks play there than it is to watch them play here.
I think Bettman pretty much has Canadian NHL fans by the balls. If we don't buy tickets, they will just move our teams to the States. If we buy tickets, he takes the credit for making the NHL a lot of money. There is pretty much nothing we can do to make the game better for us. He knows we'll come back no matter what. If US fans buy lots of tickets, he'd just use that as another excuse to move another team to the US.
The league is just about money. Bettman wants that big US TV deal he's been dreaming of since he took over. He doesn't have a good TV deal and he wants to take it out on the players. He leaves a team losing big money in Phoenix and wants players to take a pay cut because the league is losing money. He locked out the players several years ago and the players had to give an across the board pay cut. He thinks he can do the same again this year. I don't see him offering to take the same pay cut himself. He makes several million a year I think.
Rest assured that when the NHL gets started again, Canadian fans will come back in droves. It is such a big part of our culture that I cannot see fans up here welcome it back with open arms when it returns.
It seems that only fans in the US may have some influence in this dispute. The NHL actually has something to lose in the US. There is greater potential for damage to US franchises for the long term. Perhaps the damage has already been done as a number of them are in trouble and one has already moved last year. It is just sad to see that the fans who love the NHL the most are the ones who suffer the most and have the least influence in this dispute.
