I remember back twenty years ago, our family used to go to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving day. We started in the pre-Mario days and quit in the early Mario days. The Penguins were awful, but that was ok. We weren’t really Penguin fans, and so we just went to enjoy the hockey. But slowly the price of the seats started to get more and more, and eventually, we stopped going. I think what was the kicker was the last game we tried to attend turned out to be sold out. That had never happened to us before, and it had never occurred to us that a game might ever sell out in Pittsburgh. One of the benefits of going to see the Penguins when they were terrible was that few other people wanted to attend. So I haven’t been to a NHL game in years.

Last Saturday Montreal played Edmonton in the first ever outdoor NHL game. The temperature was listed at -19C at the end of the second period. That works out to be around zero degrees in American. So it was pretty cold. And they charged $100 per seat. Of course that was Canadian dollars, so it isn’t as bad as it sounds at first, but that still is more than the cost of a CD or a DVD. Despite all this discouragement, sixty thousand people showed up!

I’ll bet the Penguins are wishing it would get that cold here in Pittsburgh so they can have sixty thousand people come see them play at Heinz Field. But unfortunately for them, I wouldn’t attend. I’d buy the CD or DVD. More likely both.