This is really happening, you guys!

Yesterday, pre-order season tickets officially went on sale for a hypothetical future hockey team in Seattle.  This is standard, apparently, when cities are trying to bring in expansion franchises.  Las Vegas, the last city to enter the NHL, got 10,000 people to pre-order season tickets.  As arenas generally hold around 20,000 people or so, this sounded pretty impressive.  It’s less impressive when you find out it took them well over  a month to get to that 10,000 total.

Less impressive, you see, because it took Seattle approximately 12 minutes to reach that number.  In the first day alone, they apparently got upwards of three times that amount.

So, yeah, I guess Seattle is a hockey town.  Who knew?  More importantly, this all but guarantees Seattle will have the NHL by 2020.  Two little, short years away.

WINTER SPORTS ARE BACK, BABY!!!

I find this tremendously exciting.  I need winter sports back in my life.  More importantly, my blog needs winter sports!  With football season coming to an unceremonious end in early January, there was only so much Seahawks fallout I could write about.  And, with the Mariners suspiciously quiet on the free agent/trade fronts this winter, there’s only so much Husky basketball I can write about, especially when I miss at least half the games because the Pac-12 plays them so late.  My blog work trickled off the last week in January, and was pathetic the entire month of February (7 total posts!).  Sure, March has Spring Training, but this Mariners team makes me sick, so I don’t figure to start writing about baseball until the games start.

That’s a solid 2-month black hole!  A black hole that should feature professional hockey in the very near future.

I didn’t purchase any season tickets, because there’s just no way that would work for me.  While I hope to live closer to Seattle in 2020 (or thereabouts), my work schedule is still pretty prohibitivie when it comes to attending night games during the week.  If I lived in the neighborhood still, it might be another matter (but, again, that neighborhood is South Lake Union, and I’m not a millionaire, so I can’t really afford to live there AND pay for a season’s worth of home games).  Besides, I’m not really an uber hockey fan.  I don’t really know all the ins and outs, and I feel like it would behoove me to watch on TV, with announcers who are sympathetic to the fair-weather Seattle hockey fan such as myself.  I mean, let’s face it, on my list of favorite sports teams, this hockey club will be at a significant disadvantage, behind Husky football, Husky basketball, the Seahawks, the Sonics (whenever they return) and the Mariners.

Though, to be fair, it probably won’t take much for Seattle Hockey to surpass the M’s in my fandom.  Making the playoffs literally one time will probably do it.

If this was the return of the Sonics, I might be singing a different tune.  I could see myself shifting my life around to make NBA basketball work (or, at the very least, buying a significant package of season tickets, if not all 41 games), but I feel like my hockey attendance will be occasional.  Friday/Saturday games, maybe once or twice a month at the most.

Also, not for nothing, but if someone like my brother wanted to go in on season tickets, I’d probably be more inclined that way.  But, his swing shift work schedule is even wackier than mine right now.  Plus, he lives in South Tacoma, which would make it an even longer trip.

But, that’s not important.  What’s important is that Seattle didn’t need me to get this thing to work.  There are plenty of crazy hockey fans here to show the world we deserve this franchise.  The owners are in place (which is more than we can say for the Sonics), the building is in the works, and the league wants us (which is more than we can say for the NBA).  It would be nearly impossible to fuck this up.

Why did that feel like “famous last words”?  If there’s a way to fuck up a sure thing, Seattle could unquestionably find it.