TD Garden Capacity Increases As Bruins Head Into Playoffs
BOSTON (CBS) - As the Bruins played their last home game of the regular season, capacity at the TD Garden doubled. Prior to Monday, May 10, just over 2,000 fans were allowed in the TD Garden to watch the Bruins play.
As vaccination numbers increased in Massachusetts, so did the venue's capacity, expanding to allow roughly 4500 fans at Monday's game against the Islanders.
"It will be awesome," one fan told WBZ. "I think it will really feel like a real game."
"The more people the better, and the louder, too," another fan said.
The expanded crowd size didn't only apply to the Garden, but all stadiums across Massachusetts. The same day, amusement parks were allowed to reopen at 50% capacity and road races could resume again.
The reopening step comes a few months before the date Massachusetts is set to reopen fully: August 1. At a news conference Monday afternoon, Governor Baker said that date could get pushed up sooner, depending on vaccination numbers.
So far, Massachusetts is a nationwide leader, with more than 4 million adults having received at least one shot and nearly 3 million fully vaccinated. At the current pace, the state is on schedule to have 4.1 million people - the Baker administration's initial goal - fully vaccinated by early June.
"If people continue to get vaccinated...and we meet those other metrics, we will consider moving it earlier," Baker said at a Monday news conference about the August 1 date. "I would say we've been pleasantly surprised by the continued participation of people here in the Commonwealth."
