There’s been quite a bit of chatter/bickering recently regarding VGK refusing to offer Stanley Cup Final tickets to season ticket holders. I’ve poked around to try and understand what is happening. Here’s what I’ve gathered.
The tickets not being offered are to authorized secondary ticket partners, not standard individual accounts. These are companies that purchase large quantities (50+) of tickets to every game and then resell them on sites other than AXS (StubHub, Gametime, TickPick, etc). These partners have held tickets for many years, including every game this preseason, regular season, postseason, and the Western Conference Final. Apparently, this is common practice not only in the NHL, but in every major sport in North America.
VGK have opted to no longer offer these tickets for the Stanley Cup Final. Instead, they will presumably release them all during tomorrow’s general on-sale, allowing all fans to buy them directly from the team through AXS.
This is why secondary tickets are currently extremely limited with fewer than 150 listings on every major resale site and the get-in price sitting above $1,200.
In theory, this is great for fans as it means large quantities will be available directly through the team tomorrow at Noon, and likely for significantly less than the current resale prices. However, it has also created a supply/demand bottleneck that is artificially propping up prices on the resale market right now, leading to confusion and inevitably many people paying way too much for seats.
Still working to gather more info, and will share if I get more but that's essentially what's happening.
How opposing GMs gifted Vegas the winningest team in hockey at the expansion draft:
Bad Trades
• Anaheim traded Vegas Shea Theodore so they take on Clayton Stoner's $3.25m x 1y contract.
• Minnesota traded Vegas Alex Tuch so they would pick up Erik Haula instead of Matt Dumba or Eric Staal.
• Pittsburgh traded Vegas a 2nd round pick (Drew Commesso) so they would take on Marc-Andre Fleury's $5.75m x 3y contract.
• NY Islanders traded Vegas the 15th overall pick (Erik Brannstrom) and a 2nd round pick (Egor Sokolov) so they would take on Mikhail Grabovski's $5m x 1y contract.
• Tampa Bay traded Vegas Nikita Gusev, a 2nd round pick (Alex Texier) and a 4th round pick (Paul Cotter) so would take on Jason Garrison's $4.6m x 1y contract
• Winnipeg traded the 13th overall pick (Nick Suzuki) for the 24th overall pick so Vegas wouldn't select Tobias Enstrom.
Bad Protections
• Boston protected Kevan Miller over Colin Miller.
• Los Angeles protected Derek Forbort over Brayden McNabb.
• St. Louis protected Sobotka, Berglund, Reaves over David Perron and Jordan Binnington.
Bad Everything
• Florida traded them Reilly Smith for a 4th round pick, left Jonathan Marchessault exposed, while protecting Alex Petrovic & Mark Pysyk.
• Columbus traded them a 1st & 2nd round pick so they would take on David Clarkson's $5.25m x 3y contract. Then they exposed 43-goal scorer William Karlsson.
In total, they finessed:
• Shea Theodore
• Jonathan Marchessault
• William Karlsson
• Reilly Smith
• David Perron
• Brayden McNabb
• Marc-Andre Fleury
—
• Alex Tuch (huge part of Jack Eichel package)
• Nick Suzuki (huge part of Max Pacioretty package)
• Drew Commesso (huge part of Robin Lehner package)
• Colin Miller (huge part of Alec Martinez package)
—
• Erik Brannstrom & Egor Sokolov (became Mark Stone)
• Erik Haula (became Nicolas Roy -> Mitch Marner)
• Alex Texier (became Keegan Kolesar)
• Nikita Gusev (became Daniil Chayka, Lukas Cormier, and Jakub Demek)
• Paul Cotter (became Alex Holtz, Akira Schmid, and Mason Moe)
The league's got no one to blame but themselves.
@SinBinVegas I saw that game vs Tampa and he’s been consistently caught wide out of the paint. He’s currently an exploitable liability and needs to stay deeper.