Wild Fans Gear Up For Must-Win Playoff Game
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- It's going to be an exciting night for Minnesota Wild fans as they host the most important game of the season yet Monday night at Xcel Energy Center.
After losing at Colorado Saturday night in Game 5 of its playoff series, the Wild need to win Game 6 to keep its season alive. If the Wild lose, the Avalanche advance to the Western Conference semifinals.
The puck drops at about 8 p.m. Monday in St. Paul and if the Wild win, the series goes back to Colorado for the decisive Game 7. Team officials said the pregame party activities scheduled to be held outside Gate 2 at Xcel Energy Center have been canceled due to weather. The events planned for Gate 1 and Gate 4 have been moved inside and will go from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Wild officials said fans need a ticket to the game to get into the pregame party and that they expect a few last-minute tickets to open up.
Yet, fans should still expect a bit of a wait for tickets, and a bit of a price hike.
The phone lines were busy Monday, and so was the website at Ticket King.
Most of Monday night's tickets were also going for twice their face value.
"The interesting thing is just the quantity of tickets that we are buying and selling," Ticket King's Mike Nowakowski said.
Nowakowski said the market for the series started slow, but excitement picked up once the fans saw results.
As the team kept winning, the fans kept buying and selling.
"There's lots of entrepreneurs out there that bought tickets in hopes of making some money, so we're buying a lot of tickets from them, and there's tons of fans that just want to get into the building to see the game," Nowakowski said.
One Wild fan, Mike Orrie, made a little extra money by selling his extra tickets.
"I just sold four," Orrie said. "I sold them for $100 each, bought them for $79."
However, he'll still be in the seats Monday, with some extra money in his pocket.
"It helps pay, uh, for the first two games that I went to already," Orrie said.
If the Wild wins and advances, get ready for even higher prices.
"My gut tells me if they get through this round, and they play the Blackhawks in the second round, you can probably add $100 a ticket onto everything," Nowakowski said.
It's likely that not all of the tickets set aside for Colorado fans Monday night would be sold, so those will open up, and limited suite tickets will also be available.