Section 108, Row G, Seat 1
When Justin Dowling's shot found the back of the empty home net at the far end of the ice with a minute to go, the game was effectively over. Vancouver was now ahead four goals to two in the final minute of the game, which would remain as the final score in the inaugural home contest for our brand new Seattle Kraken. As I peered around at the faces of our section, even after enduring a rough third period of hockey, I saw nary a hint of any sadness for the loss. Everyone was still riding the highest of highs from the night, a high that, two days later, I was still feeling right along with soreness and hoarseness in my throat. That thrill that comes from being a part of something special, something new, and something totally unique.
Now, I've been incredibly fortunate in my life to have been able to attend countless sporting events, including the 1999 and 2013 Rose Bowls, The 2013 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship, a Chicago Cubs home playoff game in 1989 (their only win), a Bulls home playoff game in 1996 after winning a then NBA record 72 games, and the 2000 WCHA Final Five hockey tournament to cheer on the Wisconsin Badgers, where somehow I scored Row B of the Target Center when I called Ticketmaster (yes, called) to order the tickets. Turns out, there was no Row A. I've still never had better seats to any sporting event. I was also lucky enough to be in the stands on the snowy November afternoon when Melvin Gordon broke Ladanian Tomlinson's 15 year-old single-game NCAA rushing record, running for 408 yards to take over the top spot. Seven days later, Oklahoma's Samaje Perine would surpass Melvin's week-old record, but we won't talk about that. October 23, 2021, however, the night of my first NHL game, will forever stand alone. From the arena, to the celebrities, to the spectacle of the event, to the fans, to the speed and power and athleticism, with all that pent up excitement for this sport, this game, in our town, we were ready to explode. It was a uniquely unforgettable evening.
In 2011, the possibility of seeing NHL hockey in Seattle went from "it would be great if we got a team" to "this might actually happen," when Chris Hansen, a local investor, almost succeeded in bringing the Sacramento Kings to Seattle as the new Sonics. Such a move would have not only brought the NBA back to Seattle, but also would have opened the door to a future NHL expansion franchise. When Hansen's deal ultimately fell through and Sacramento mayor and former NBA star Kevin "KJ" Johnson was able to work his own stadium deal to keep the Kings in town, it dashed not only the hopes of the Sonics fans, but also those of folks like me who were excited about a possible NHL team in the future. It was a gut punch.
When Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling got himself into all sorts of trouble for his blatantly racist behaviors in 2014, allowing Hansen group's leading money man, ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, to acquire the NBA team for $2 billion, all the NBA and NHL aspirations envisioned by Hansen seemed to evaporate overnight. It felt like the NHL was at least a decade away, maybe more, from coming to Seattle, and that stung.
Saturday at Climate Pledge Arena was a literal "Who's who" of big Seattle and NHL names. Seattle icon Ann Wilson, of the 70s and 80s rock band, Heart, dulcetly and flawlessly belted out the national anthem. When NHL boss Gary Bettman took the stage to welcome the Kraken home, he received a course of boos specially reserved for league commissioners. And during the intermissions and TV timeouts, other local celebrities would step out on to The Deck, a platform situated at the south end of the arena directly behind the goal, to pump up the crowd (not that we needed it). These included Seattle Storm legend and future Basketball Hall of Famer Sue Bird, Seahawks superstars Bobby Wagner and DK Metcalf, and musical sensation Macklemore, among others. And because of the location of our seats in the last row of the loge level, all of these celebrities were mere feet from us.
On Monday of the previous week, our son had been sent home from school with COVID-like symptoms. We had already arranged for sleepovers for both kids at friends' houses so we could attend the game, and it now looked like we might not be able to make it to the game at all. We also learned the same day that the brother of the friend hosting the sleepover for our son had tested positive for COVID, and they boys had spent time together outside the prior week. Thankfully, our son's test came back negative, and we were able to make alternate game day arrangements for him, so it was game on.
After dropping off the kiddos with their friends, we headed down to the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, where Seattle Center and the new Climate Pledge Arena reside. It was 3PM, four hours or so before the puck was to drop, and two hours until the arena doors opened, so we stopped off for some overpriced but tasty Mexican food, and then got in line at the arena about 40 minutes before the doors were even set to open.
In 2017, rumblings of a new arena group, Oak View Group (OVG), started showing up in local sports media, talking about plans to renovate Key Arena with an eye for an NHL team. I wasn't excited about having to trek down to Lower Queen Anne to see games, but I was ecstatic about what this meant for Seattle's hockey prospects. After Chris Hansen's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the city of Seattle expired on December 3, OVG was ready to present their own MOU to the city. On December 6, the Seattle City Council voted to approve Oak View’s MOU.
In February 2018, it was then announced that a season ticket drive was to take place on March 1st at 10AM. I was at a work hackathon that day, and at 9:45 I was on Ticketmaster's website already, setting up my payment method and all the other information that I could enter ahead of time. From there, it was a waiting game. Honestly, my memory of the next 20 minutes is hazy at best. About two minutes before 10, I started refreshing my browser.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
YOU ARE NOW IN THE WAITING ROOM, AND YOUR SPOT IN LINE IS RESERVED. PLEASE WAIT PATIENTLY AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SECURE YOUR TICKET(S) SOON.
"YES!!!!!"
Ok, that might not be exactly how things went, but it's close. In my excitement, I lacked the capacity to wait patiently (who could?), but I did the best I could manage, and eventually was able to get in and put down a single season ticket deposit of $500. I was ecstatic. My coworker Erik, a huge NHL fan himself, having lived for a time around San Jose and become a fan of the Sharks, had also made an early deposit. Within 12 minutes, another 9,998 future Kraken fans made their season ticket deposits along with us. By the end of an hour, there were 25,000. By the end of the day, there were over 32,000. OVG had to stop taking deposits shortly thereafter. This was gonna be a hell of a ride!
A few days later, I received an email from NHL Seattle confirming my deposit, and assigning me a delightfully low priority number of 660. Two and a half years would go by before that number would matter.
As the doors opened and fans began filing into the arena, there were cell phones and camera flashes everywhere. People were taking video, photos, selfies, Facebook Live, and tiktoks of EVERYTHING. Taking it all in. My last visit was for that 2013 NCAA Volleyball Final Four, and like many of the 17,151 fans in the sellout crowd that inaugural night, had also watched my share of concerts, Seattle SuperSonics basketball, and Seattle Thunderbirds Hockey under that same roof. What greeted us upon entry was entirely new, yet oddly familiar. The large glass windows of the Alaska Airlines atrium permitted enough of the gray filtered sunlight of the typically overcast October day to add to the glow and the buzz provided by the fans. We walked through the tunnel to our seats, directly behind the south goal, just under The Deck, and felt the energy, even in a basically empty arena, with still an hour and 45 minutes before the first NHL face-off ever in Seattle.
On December 4, 2018, after waiting for 8 months that felt more like an eternity, the NHL Board of Governors met in Sea Island, Georgia, and unanimously voted to award Seattle an expansion team. While this was thought to be a foregone conclusion following the season ticket drive in March, there was still anxiety as it was not yet official. The next day, OVG began construction on the site of the original Washington State Pavilion, which opened in 1962 for the World's Fair, and would soon be renovated and eventually renamed in 1964 to The Seattle Center Coliseum, a name it would hold until it reopened on October 26, 1995 as newly renovated Key Arena.
Once we had checked out the view from our seats, we decided to leave to walk around and check out the sight lines from other sections. We walked around both sides of the upper concourse, again just taking everything in, finding the bathrooms, food vendors, and signing up for the palm-reading grab-and-go stores. I also tried out the arena wifi, which from our seats was absolutely phenomenal. I was getting 50+ Mbps up and down! On a subsequent trip to the arena, I would finally visit the main concourse, to stand in awe of the living wall, salivate over Din Tai Fung, and learn all about the different aspects of the climate pledge that gives the arena its name.
The arena itself stands as both an ecological and engineering marvel, harvesting filtered rainwater to feed the ice, sunlight from an array of solar panels to offset fossil fuel usage, and perhaps the most impressive feat, the incredible engineering effort undertaken to prop up that iconic 22 thousand ton roof while the entire inside was demolished, deepened, and rebuilt.
It began in early January with reports of a new disease sickening and killing people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. On January 21st, the first US case was reported, and that hit close to home. It was a student at the same high school my children will eventually attend, so REALLY close to home. On March 3, my employer at the time asked all employees with the capability to do so to work from home for at least the next two weeks. To my knowledge, nearly two years later, few, if any, have returned to the office. Just over a week later, on March 11, everything changed. Tom Hanks announced he was infected with COVID-19, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, and both the NBA and NHL suspended their respective seasons. The next day, the NCAA followed suit, officially canceling their basketball tournaments due to a very different sort of March Madness. The North American sports world completely ceased in less than 24 hours. It was a day I’ll never forget.
In December 2018, on the day after the NHL board of governors had approved the Seattle NHL expansion team, Dan Gartland of Sports Illustrated released a list of names for the new franchise, taken from 13 website domains registered to an attorney connected with OVG. In Gartland's view, "Kraken" was the least worthy name, having no real connection in its lore to the Pacific Northwest and seeming, "minor league", instead favoring other names that were far less fun, but more intimately connected with the region, such as Sockeyes, Emeralds, Totems, Rainiers, and Seals. Could you imagine attending a game and having to cheer, "Let's Go Seals! Let's Go Seals!" No. Just no. Of the others in Gartland's top 5, Rainiers is already taken by the Seattle Mariners' Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers, and similar to seals, the idea of rooting for a fish that I'd rather be eating seemed wrong, however I fell in love with "Kraken" immediately.
Somewhat lost in the chaos and fear that characterized the early pandemic, as well as the sports world mourning the loss of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, was this tweet from the NHL Seattle twitter account on January 29, 2020:
While we’re aware of some fishy rumors surrounding our team name, please rest assured we’re doing our due diligence by scouring the depths of the ocean, the tallest mountains, and the densest parts of the forest to find the right name for our great, green city.
Reading the replies to that tweet, it became clear that there were still some very strong opinions for and against many of the potential names.
A few tense months later, both because of the pandemic, and of course the disagreements over team names, on July 23, 2020, the team officially unveiled the Seattle Kraken name and logos were announced. Early merchandise sales began, even before the official sweaters had been designed. The logo was well received, with it's seemingly simple S paying homage to the first Stanley Cup Champions, the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans. Looking deeper, however, the logo got even better. With the red eye in the top of the S, the tentacle in the negative space, and the alternate anchor logo's embedding Space Needle, these logos and colors were unique among major North American professional sports franchises, and very much Seattle.
I bought a hat, t-shirt, hoodie, and puck that day. You could say I was starting to get excited. That would be a supreme understatement.
Following our arena walkabout, we returned to our seats in time to witness the teams conduct their warm-up sessions, followed by the cleaning of the ice. Even that was distinctly Seattle, with one Zamboni sporting a Starbucks logo. After some pregame activities I can scarcely recall, and after Bettman's welcome speech and Ann Wilson's incredible anthem rendition, it was time to play some hockey!
As the players skated to center ice for the opening face-off, the arena had an energy I've never felt before. Not leaving the Iron Bull smelling like cheap champagne after someone started spraying the crowd when the Cubs won it all. Not at the Rose Bowl, United Center, Camp Randall. It was new. We were watching history as it happened. We were all brand new fans of a brand new team in a brand new arena, and in that moment, everyone in attendance knew and appreciated that fact.
In my inbox on the morning of August 12, 2020, I found an invitation to my Seattle Kraken Season Ticket selection appointment. Holy crap, is this actually happening? I've had college football and hockey season tickets in the past, but never professional, and never for a 41 game home season. I felt excited, intimidated, and joyful. The appointment was to take place on September 1, at 10:45AM. My (now former) coworker Erik and I had kept in touch, and he was willing to wait a few days after his priority number so we could have our seats together.
When we finally met on zoom for that early September appointment with our Seattle Kraken membership representative, we were able to secure a pair of seats with nobody directly behind us, and only stairs in front of our seats, and almost perfectly centered directly behind the south goal, where the Kraken would try to score during the first and third periods of games. The financial outlay was a bit higher than I expected, but I had (mostly) planned for it, so feeling the sticker shock didn't sting quite so much.
I had probably watched 20 or so college hockey games live, as well as some IHL with the Milwaukee Admirals, and a couple of Seattle Thunderbirds games, most from a similar vantage point behind the visiting goal. I had watched future NHL players Steve Reinprecht and Dany Heatley put on clinics against the likes of Michigan Tech and St. Cloud State, and in what I can only describe as the best two games of hockey I had ever seen, I watched Wisconsin goaltender Graham Melanson stop around 50 shots from North Dakota's attackers over the course of each of the two night series, culminating in two overtime victories for the Badgers against their toughest rival during the 1999-2000 WCHA season. North Dakota would go on to win the WCHA tournament and ultimately the NCAA Frozen Four Championship that year.
I had also watched countless NHL games on TV. But none of that had prepared me for the skills, speed, and power that the best players in the world put on display live. Watching this caliber of play was a spectacle in itself, and watching them with 17,151 rabid fans welcoming a brand new team to the league and the city took the energy level way beyond 11 - well off the charts.
The first period was mostly a blur. I don't remember much. I could probably rewatch a recording of the game and still not remember much. But with about 30 seconds to play in a scoreless first period, I decided to try to capture some game action. When Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn hit paydirt in the back of the net with 3.2 seconds left in the period, it triggered the M.V. Hyak's horn, donated to Climate Pledge Arena by Washington State Ferries, to blow, sending the sellout crowd into an absolute frenzy. It was my incredible luck that I was able to capture a very blurry version of it with my phone. That horn, which had laid quiet for 4 years after the Hyak's retirement, had now sprung to life, signaling the Seattle Kraken's first ever home goal, and Dunn had given his team a 1-0 lead. It was electric.
The Canucks would go on to tie the game in the second period on a Bo Horvat goal before Kraken Captain Mark Giordano would score in the third to once again give the Kraken the lead. Unfortunately for Seattle, Vancouver would follow that by scoring twice to overtake Seattle 3-2, scoring first on another Bo Horvat goal, this time on the power play, followed up by Conor Garland with just over four minutes to play. When Justin Dowling tallied his empty netter with a minute left to seal the win for the visitors, the home crowd largely stuck around to cheer on their team to the final horn, before jubilantly filing out of the stands, into Lower Queen Anne's assortment of bars and restaurants, a neighborhood reinvigorated by the presence of the new team and arena.
The game may have ended, but the story is only beginning. Since that inaugural night, I've watched nearly every game played by the Kraken, many from that same seat just below The Deck. I've learned a lot more about hockey in general, and have become reacquainted with the teams and players after not watching much for the past few years. And while this team has struggled to find consistency, I've found the atmosphere at Climate Pledge Arena to be one of the greatest sporting environments I've ever experienced, game-in, game-out. Even during losses, the fans get behind the team, rooting them on, exploding with every goal, cheering every penalty killing clear, and enjoying Yanni Gourde's almost ever-present grin. He's having fun on the ice. We're all having fun in the stands. And if the ambiance is this dynamic watching a bottom tier NHL team, can you imagine what it will be like when this team starts competing to get in the playoffs? I can... and I can't wait to experience it!
Thanks for reading, y'all. Catch ya when the puck drops.
I LIKE IT! LET'S GO KRAKEN!
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