Drop the puck!
Regular readers of Midwest Guest know it's occasion
for celebration as I hold a harbinger of advancing autumn in my hand--tickets
for a Plymouth Whalers pre-season hockey game.
The Whalers are part of the Ontario Hockey League
(OHL), a Junior Major-level team where 16- to 20-year-old athletes competing to
become part of a National Hockey League (NHL) team often start their
professional careers.
Our Whaler season tickets are an affordable
alternative to high-priced NHL "Big League" tickets and mean we can
feed our hockey fix with high-level, fast-paced hockey throughout the entire
season.
We've had Whaler season tickets since the early
1990s, so we've seen former Whalers like David Legwand, Chad LaRose, Pat Peake,
Todd Harvey, Robert Esche, Fred Brathwaite, James Wisniewski, Chris Thorburn and Bryan Berard at the early stages of their
professional careers--before they eventually landed in the NHL.
The Whalers, mindful of their largely
family-oriented audience and Michigan's sluggish economy, held the line on
ticket prices this year. A 34-game season ticket package costs $269 to $399,
while individual game tickets cost $11 to $15. The team offers several other
value package and group pricing plans, including a special 9-pack ticket
package for $90 to help celebrate the team's upcoming 20th OHL season.
We've got great center-ice seats, although there
isn't a bad seat in the venue's 3,500-seat hockey arena configuration (the
arena holds as many as 4,500 for concerts, graduations and other events).
Some of my favorite things, beyond the great hockey
action, about watching a game at the Whalers' arena? Great aisle seats,
reasonably priced Canadian beer (not the over-priced, watered-down dreck that
passes for beer at the NHL arenas I've visited) and the Whaler practice of
playing both Canadian and American national anthems before each game, even for
games between two U.S.-based teams.
We always look out for hockey action when we travel,
even in the summer.
We went out to Erie, Pennsylvania last month and
checked out the home arena of the OHL Erie Otters. I tried a door, and it
opened. Imagine our surprise to find we'd stumbled onto an Erie Otter practice
session!
As you can tell, I'm more than ready for the season
to start and eagerly anticipating our first look at this season's team at 2
p.m. on Saturday, September 5 at a pre-season game with our cross-river rivals,
the Windsor (Ontario) Spitfires.
The Whalers open their regular home season at 7:05
p.m. on Saturday, September 19 against the Oshawa (Ontario) Generals at the
Whalers' Compuware Arena in Plymouth, Michigan.
© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved
Hockey ah yes. Here in Calgary we have the NHL Flames of course, but also a Western Hockey League team - The Hitmen. Sames level as OHL and it also consists of US and Canadian Teams from all over the west, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Kamloops, etc. Excellent hockey for a reasonable price.
Steve
Posted by: Steve Davis | September 03, 2009 at 08:24 AM
Steve--I've heard of the WHL and the Hitmen. I wish we could get Canadian sports cable channels here in Detroit because I could probably see some Whalers' away games and teams from the other parts of the CHL (the WHL and the Quebec-based league).
You're right--it's excellent hockey at a very reasonable price!
Posted by: Dominique | September 07, 2009 at 02:40 PM