There are many experiences people say are “once in a lifetime” experiences, experiences so great that the likelihood of them being repeated is slim to none later in life. And while yes, a sports team’s championship banner being raised is something that happens annually, very few fans get the opportunity to be there for one, let alone for the one at the start of the fiftieth anniversary season. And on October 13, 2016, I got the opportunity to be there for the Pittsburgh Penguins home opener.
It started out like any normal Penguins gameday, waking up at 9:45 a.m. and aggressively refreshing the Ticketmaster Student Rush page until the very few amount of tickets for the night’s game would be released to the thousands of anxious college students, desperate to get in the building for Opening Night. At 10 a.m., the tickets were released, and as I am putting the seats in my cart for my two friends and I and press the checkout button, I get the notification that made my heart drop.
“Your seats selected have already been purchased”
Heartbreak. Anguish. All feelings washing over me at 10:01 a.m. when I realized my only chance to be in the building to watch the banner being raised was taken from me. Such a great way to start the day, and I haven’t even got to class yet. Nonetheless, I was determined to make sure I was in the building to watch the banner get raised. Then, during my 12:15 class, I saw something that made me do a double take, more student rush tickets available. It couldn’t be. Certainly a mistake. Acting purely on impulse, I rushed to put them in my cart and went to checkout, a text saying we got the tickets was ready to go out to my friends who I was working with to try and get in, but as soon as I was getting ready to send the text, a familiar message popped up…
“Your seats selected have already been purchased”
At this point, I was nearly ready to throw my laptop out the window. For the second time today, my tickets were taken away from me when I was so close to getting them. I wasn’t about to go down without a fight. The next hour and a half was spent refreshing the Student Rush page with the hopes of maybe, just maybe, more tickets being released. When this failed, my friend and I had the bright idea that we surprisingly didn’t think of until 3 p.m. on gameday; go to the box office at Consol Energy Center, a mere seven minute walk from Duquesne campus. After begging and pleading with the people at the box office for anything other than the $210 club seats that were the only seats available, we left Consol knowing that there was a solid possibility that we weren’t going to be here to witness history later that night. After being sent back empty handed, we decided there was only one possible route left, resale tickets.
With time running out, we scoured Ticketmaster for resale tickets that weren’t too overpriced, and then finally, with less than an hour to game time, we found them. Seats in the 200 Level that just happened to be on the side of the ice where the banner would be raised. We bought them and ran from our dorm to the mob of people trying to make it in the building before the banner raising activities would begin. Finally, at 7:44 p.m., we made it to our seats, just in time to watch the ceremony.
The ceremony itself was fantastic, and gave me, and probably a good majority of the eighteen thousand other people in the building, chills all throughout the ceremony. The game itself lived up to all the hype we could ask for, back and forth action between both teams, fantastic displays of individual skill, even a proper fight. Not bad for Opening Night. The game ended up going to a shootout, the most stressful experience as a fan watching, each player having an oppritunity to play hero. Malkin, Letang and Kessel scored for the Penguins in the shootout, and Marc-Andre Fleury denied Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin in the fourth round to end Opening Night on the highest of high notes. And as the crowds emptied out onto Fifth Ave. in Pittsburgh to the tune of Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard,” the celebration of the fourth Stanley Cup had concluded, but the pursuit of number five, had just begun.
