Yesterday I was beyond excited to have bought my first ever round of Los Angeles Kings playoff tickets!! Four (4) tickets for all four potential games of Round 1 had been placed on my credit card and I couldn’t have been happier. That is, until the Kings played the Dallas Stars later where they dropped another game (4-1). But let me back track and “discuss” the playoff ticket buying process, which I am not a fan of.
For the regular season, there are plenty of ways you can buy Kings tickets; online through Ticketmaster, StubHub, Ticket Exchange, etc; by calling 1-888-KINGS-LA and talking with a live person; going to the box office game day; being shady with scalpers; friends being awesome. Basically tickets are easy to get…when the team is doing poorly. Tickets are tossed around like candy because all the Kings want is for someone to have paid for the seat by the time the puck drops. But the easy road to get tickets has changed a bit now that the team can look to the horizon and see the word “playoffs” there. After reading a bunch of emails and newsletters and then calling my ticket rep, there is only one bottom line. It is: you can’t buy “playoff strips” unless you place a 5% deposit on any ticket package/seats for the 2010-11 season.
WHAT?
Really? What kind of ridiculous rule is this?? Here’s the bottom line for me: I don’t want to commit any of my money to next season when all I want to do is buy tickets for the playoffs ONLY. So after stressing out for a bit, I figured out my solution by taking some different channels and put my money down on the table when I was happy. Round 1, here I come!
They’re going to make the playoffs, right? Well, after last night’s game, I’m not as confident but I’m definitely not giving up hope. They are now on a three-game skid and we’d better not be watching the Kings continue that trend. For this game specifically, I know Matt Greene was out with an injury, but why play Randy Jones over 17 minutes? He doesn’t instill any confidence in me, especially when he’s out on one of the power play units. And why did Jeff Halpern play more minutes than Wayne Simmonds? I was virtually unimpressed with just about everything in this game except the goal by Michal Handzus. You can’t hate that kind of effort.
The sheer amount of penalties taken was ridiculous, and the amount of times Dustin Brown was the target was getting to be annoying. I couldn’t do anything but watch the downfall til the clock ran out. Hopefully this is the last time I have to say, “‘I’m going to just put this game out of my memory bank.”