Built long before Quinnipiac became a true “hockey school,” M&T Bank Arena’s ice hockey arena fits 3,386 fans at maximum ca- pacity — at least, officially, that is.
But on Oct. 7, 3,700 people — over 300 more than the arena can technically accommodate — filed into the Hamden, Connecticut, rink for the men’s hockey team’s season opener against Boston College.
The last time a men’s hockey game attracted this many spectators to the bank was seven-and-a-half years ago, when 3,696 people came to watch the Bobcats take down Yale in February 2016.
And while last Saturday’s game against the Eagles was no crowd-favorite “Beat Yale” game, the game held a different allure — it was the first time the Bobcats have taken the ice as the defending NCAA Division I nation- al champions since winning it all in April.
“This is the biggest game of the year be- sides the Yale game, and we’re really looking forward to it,” said Emily Balboni pregame, a senior software engineering major and a member of the Quinnipiac Pep Band. “We’re excited to show the student body what we’re here for.”
Quinnipiac officials were slated to do on that overcast October evening what no one in the small Connecticut college’s nearly 100- year history had ever done before: hoist a NCAA national championship banner high onto the arena’s back wall.
Thousands of spectators crowded the arena to watch Quinnipiac officials forever memorialize the underdog team — so unknown to most of the nation that play-by-play announcers required pronunciation guides — with a bright yellow national title banner.
“It’s an exciting night — the banner, the whole deal,” Hamden resident and season ticket-holder Don Barese said. “This town is a hockey town, all around.”
Even Boston College fans expressed their excitement to be in attendance.
“Couldn’t start with a better matchup than playing the defending national champion,” said Hingham, Massachusetts, native Doug Farrington.
Several hundred other fans who could not attend the game — which coincided with Bobcat Weekend — attended a watch party on the Mount Carmel Campus. The watch party’s turn-out was so unexpectedly high, in fact, that university officials had to move the event from the quad to the Recreation and Wellness Center.
But for some fans who managed to get inside the arena, attending the banner-raising game proved to be a rather expensive outing.
There are two main ways to purchase tickets to Quinnipiac sporting events at M&T Bank Arena: on the Quinnipiac Ticket Central and via third-party ticket resale marketplaces.
The university’s ticket portal offers students the opportunity to claim one free student ticket per person and buy additional individual tickets for $25 each. On TicketSmarter, the university’s approved ticket reseller — and on other third- party ticket sites like StubHub and Ticketmas- ter — those $25 tickets tend to sell for double, triple or even quadruple that amount.
Six days before Saturday’s game, on Oct. 1, university officials conducted a special ticket release to provide Quinnipiac students the op- portunity to attend the game.
Officials announced the special release in a university-wide email on Sept. 28 and reminded students in a follow-up email at 11:50 a.m. on Oct. 1, 10 minutes before the noon release.
Isabella Chambers, a junior nursing ma- jor and president of QU Spirit, said even the famed Teletubbies were not exempt from the stressful student ticket process.
“I just had the portal open right at noon and made sure that I got the ticket,” said Chambers, who dressed as the green Teletubby for Saturday’s game. “Then I had to find who else had tickets so that they could Teletubby.”
Amid the campus ticket scramble, junior nursing major Camille Flayhan had to ask a friend to get her a ticket while she was driving.
“I mean, it was stressful,” Flayhan said. “Everyone hyped it up so much — it was fine.” But once those tickets were gone, they were gone. And for a game as monumental as Saturday’s, tickets were reselling online for well over $100.
One ticket holder took to Vivid Seats, another third-party ticket resale site, an hour before puck drop to list their tickets to the season opener for $937 each.
And, as always, some students took to anonymous social media platform YikYak in the hours before the game to sell — or beg for — tickets to the game.
But for every post advertising a game ticket, there were two posts criticizing stu- dents for reselling their free tickets at outra- geously marked-up prices.
“I know kids spending $150,” one user wrote in an anonymous post to the Quinnipiac YikYak. “Shit’s actual robbery. Prison.”
Others took to the anonymous posting platform in an attempt to dissuade students from buying the resale tickets.
“PLEASE EVERYONE DO NOT BUY STUDENT TICKETS FROM ANYONE,” one user wrote in an Oct. 7 post on the platform. “YOU’RE GIVING IDIOTS FREE MONEY.”
Several posters, though, did not blame the ticket sellers so much as they did the buyers.
“You guys are ridiculous for selling student tickets you got for free but you’re even more ridiculous if you actually pay,” one post read.
In a post that garnered a lot of attention on the platform, one user put on blast students who paid hundreds of dollars for tickets their sellers got for free.
“If you buy a FREE student ticket for 200 DOLLARS there’s actually something wrong with you,” the user wrote.
Some students said ticket prices deterred them from even attempting to attend the ban- ner-raising game.
“I just felt that it would be impossible to get a ticket, so I didn’t really try,” said Ryan Ziaks, a junior English major. “I know that students would drive the price up, and it just wouldn’t be worth it.”
But the notion of overpriced resale tickets was somewhat lost on season ticket holders like Barese.
“I haven’t thought about (the ticket prices) because we just get our season tickets,” Barese said. “I haven’t missed a home game in 10 years.”
And for a game of this magnitude, Barese said he thought the high ticket prices made sense. “When people want to come, they pay,” Barese said. “It’s like anything else.”
