I Went “ALL IN” – My 1st Year As A CBJ Season Ticket Holder
- Updated: April 10, 2018
Last summer, the CBJ said they were “All In” for at least 2 seasons. Later in that summer I decided I would be All In as well. I made the decision, along with a friend @Sarah__Kent to go ahead and get season tickets. I usually go to 15 to 20 games a year anyway, so I thought “Hey, why not?”
Ill admit, I was a bit nervous about it. 41 games to try to get to and constant schedule conflicts, but we made it work, and I managed to miss exactly ZERO games this season. Pretty awesome if you ask me. And I sat with someone that was pretty awesome too, so that helps! 🙂
The season also had us at RBar….alot! Before and after games. Roosters and BDubs also benefited from us, having spent many nights after games going to those establishments and either being happy about a win, or pissed off. Luckily we were happy more than we were pissed off this year.
This whole experience was new to me and I had no clue what to expect. I went in with no expectations other than simply going to the games and enjoying them with my seat mate. I always heard people talk about the goodies and benefits, but based on my luck and experience, I wouldn’t actually get anything free, and I didn’t for what its worth, but I was fine with that. I also had an awesome rep that was there when I needed him.
As far as the season went, obviously the CBJ played pretty well at home, so we got to see a lot of wins. 26 wins to be exact. With many of those being dramatic OT wins. A few blow outs, and some heart breaking losses. Some highlights and a few lowlights, but that’s to be expected.
5 Highlights :
- Opening night shutout vs the Islanders. Any time the CBJ can beat NYI I’m happy with that.
- Artemi Panarins first goal against the NYR. It was pure magic to see him working his way thru the defense and score on Hank.
- Beating Chicago and Washington in back to back home games.
- Beating Vegas, Colorado and Detroit in the same week. Huge games that put them back in the playoff race.
- 4-0 shutout of Florida late in March, which separated the CBJ from the fast coming Panthers.
- ***BONUS*** Watching the CBJ come back from a 4-1 deficit to beat the Wings in OT. Was insane!
5 Lowlights :
- Getting shutout for the season against Tampa Bay. A combined 7-0. Those games were not fun.
- Getting hammered by Edmonton 7-2. Not only losing the game, but losing Brandon Dubinsky to a scary injury.
- Losing to the team from Western PA is always a lowlight.
- Getting crushed by a terrible Vancouver team at home 5-2, terrible.
- Losing to Washington with 40 seconds or so left in regulation. Heartbreaker!
And to top it off, the CBJ made the playoffs for the second straight season. A lot of people are downplaying this, but this is actually a pretty hard thing to do in sports, especially for a smaller market team. For some perspective, the 2018 NFL playoffs only had 4 teams in the playoffs that were in the playoffs in 2017. That being said, the CBJ join Washington and Pittsburgh as repeat teams from the Metro, I would say that puts our team in pretty good company. So let people downplay it all they want, but this is good for this franchise.
All in all, my experience as a first year, full season ticket holder was pretty sweet. And we have renewed, so Section 210 Row Q, look out, we’re coming back!! By the way, shout out to Section 210 Row Q, y’all were pretty awesome to sit with. And we were lucky this year, we had a lot of rival fans sit near us, but funny enough, none of them were too bad. Leafs fans, you know I have a certain disdain for you, but you are normally quiet when you’re losing, and we beat you, so yeah! As far as Wing fan, and Western PA fan, we also didn’t have any that really bothered us at all. Was weird actually. I fully expect that to change next year, there’s no way in hell that Leaf fan, Wing fan and Western PA fan stay in line 2 years in a row!
So now its time for the playoffs. At least 2 games at Nationwide Arena against the Washington Capitals. The arena should be rocking since there won’t be a certain teams fans attending for a change, so lets make sure Washington and the NHL knows how we party.
I’ll see you guys in Section 210!
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