NHL 2018-2019
Anaheim, CA
I’d like to start this one with a little back story. I had a bit of a curse, every time I picked a favorite player (baseball or hockey) something would happen to that player. Don’t believe me? here are my best examples: Chone Figgins, Anaheim Angels- right about the time I decided he was my favorite player he was traded to the Mariners. Next in baseball was JB Shuck, Anaheim Angels (brought up and down from Majors to minor league and finally traded to Cleveland). I decided to pick a pitcher (Angels are ALWAYS struggling for a pitcher) so picked Shoemaker as my new favorite. What year was that? 2016, the year he had to have brain surgery for being hit in the head with a line drive in September 2016. So I switched to hockey, I’d give the ducks a try and see if my favorites would last more than a minute. First up? Patrick Maroon, and just 5 seasons shy of being a duck, the man was traded to the Edmonton Oilers. Next I thought, okay they’ll never get rid of Freddy Anderson, he is killing it as our goalie. But alas, once again (THE VERY NEXT SEASON) he was traded to Toronto.
I learned at that point, I just needed to get over wanting to have a jersey that would be “forever” on my team. So 2016-2017 season I picked the newbie, the “nobody” 19 year old kid that was brand spanking new to the team and not a lot of people “knew” him yet. On October 23rd, 2016 I went to the team store and bought the first jersey I’d ever had with a player’s name on it. And guess what? He scored a goal as they were making it. Must be a good sign right?
The 2017/2018 season passes and to my surprise Ritchie is still on the team. Insert plan to get season tickets with Kelly! We considered that Kelly and I already went to a good chunk of games since I moved back to SoCal, parking is expensive but we’d found a couple lots that weren’t bad, getting there after work was actually pretty easy, so we start thinking “lets just do it”. Being a season ticket holder was already on my list, so I was thrilled to have someone that wanted to go in with me! 2018-2019 Season Tickets PURCHASED.
But then guess who hadn’t signed his contract at the beginning of the season for 2018-2019? Nick Ritchie.. Haha I was UPSET to say the very least. Oh well, I would still get to do some fun things at Honda Center and see the Ducks.
A couple weeks into the 2018/2019 season on October 17th at a home game the announcer confirmed that RITCHIE had signed with the ducks for 3 years. Not knowing if he’d be at the event (Face off Fest October 18th 2018) I went with my Ritchie Jersey just hoping maybe he’d be there. We were in line to get my sister Jacov Silverberg’s autograph, when someone working the event mentioned that EVEN though he wasn’t on the formal event guide, he was actually THERE signing autographs.
So yeah, I was a total fan girl, RAN over to his (significantly shorter) line. When I got to the front Sarah didn’t even want his autograph and just took pictures for me. I told him “you scored while they were making this jersey” and he told me back “must be good luck” or something along those lines.
He stayed a Duck the whole rest of our season tickets, only to be trade to Boston for the 2019-2020 season.
Overall here are my thoughts on season tickets: go in with more than just 2 couples. Kelly is a nurse so her schedule is always a bit different. We’d made a pack, if the other person couldn’t go, the others significant other could go free of charge if not we’d try to sell to our friends to get cost. She ended up missing quite a few games and I gave up a few of mine in Busy season. If we had 1-2 other couples it would have still felt like “fun” to go after the 25+ game of the season, at times it was more obligation that we felt we had to go because it actually ended up being a LOT of money to miss a game when we could not get anyone to buy our tickets.
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