Thanks to Felicia Alexandra Prehn for this, you can find her work at Punks And Pucks. This is her story…..please fire away at the end. Gracias.
————————————————————
In November of last year, I wrote a post about how my birthday was ruined by unattractive, obnoxious puck bunnies at a Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins game against the Norfolk Admirals (still waiting on that beer, Mr. Pouliot). Since that game, I’ve had many unpleasant encounters with various fans at the arena. Some fat kid in a Crosby jersey tried to pick a fight with me the night the Penguins eliminated Norfolk from the playoffs just because I was talking about Matias Ritola being a solid play maker. I’ve come to expect extreme homer-ism and an overall ignorance regarding the game of hockey from these people, but recently, it’s the front office that’s been annoying me the most.
When my fiance had initially asked me to move to Finland with him, I thought that maybe I would keep my season tickets and continue supporting both the local team and the local economy, despite my general dislike of the fans and the Penguins style of play. Even though I was dissatisfied, I believed that NEPA hockey fans deserved to have a hockey team closer to home than Hershey or Binghamton. However, I progressively became more and more annoyed with how the front office was treating fans, especially on social media websites like Facebook.
Those of us who are truly passionate about the game of hockey would frequently post on the team’s Wall, offering suggestions as to how to make games more enjoyable for fans. We suggested changing the goal song to something other than the same annoying Jock Jams song every other team in every other sport uses. We suggested doing jersey raffles instead of jersey auctions so that more people could have a chance at winning. The average yearly income in the city of Wilkes-Barre is round $27,000, and it’s even lower once you get out of the metro area. Most of us can’t afford a $400 starting bid for a RYAN CRAIG jersey, let alone a player that’s actually significant (I’m just being real, sorry man), but we could easily afford $10 or 420 raffle tickets. More money would be made, and the fans would be happier. Instead of thanking us for our ideas and imput, our wall posts get deleted, and the other fans on the page try to make us out to be villainous, miserable people who hate the team, when it’s very clearly the exact opposite.
How can a team use the slogan “Fans First”, yet discourage freedom of speech, show complete disregard for lower-income fans, and ignore us when we express our opinions? We keep the front office employees employed. We keep the team here. We’re the ones who come out even when there’s a foot of snow on the ground just so we can see our local team give it their all, and as a way of saying “thank you” to us, we get ignored and treated like… well, shit.
This is minor league hockey. Sidney Crosby may come to the arena once a year for a preseason game, but the team’s never had a championship, and we rarely have a sell out game other than opening night. There’s no room for ego here, and there’s certainly no room for unappreciative, replaceable office workers. The American hockey League is a wonderful organization with a reputation for being fan-friendly, but leave it to Wilkes-Barre, PA to ruin that, like everything else.
NOTE: This post has nothing to do with the players. I’ve met several, aand they’ve all been stand-up guys who very clearly love their fans.
