Much like The Golden Girls and Donald Trump’s hair, all good (and probably fictionalized) things come to an end. Case in point: the Vancouver Canucks’ 474 game consecutive sellout streak, which reportedly ended this past weekend, when 18,647 ticket holders took in the team’s 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. That means there were approximately 250 fewer people in the stands than any other home game in the last 11 seasons, which as anyone who’s remotely followed the Canucks on TV or in person knows is more or less bunk.
Until this past weekend, the Canucks organization has steadfastly maintained that its home games were always sold out and any empty seats (most often during weeknight matches against unsexy expansion teams because … boring) were the result of unused tickets.
We get it. Who of us hasn’t claimed something was bigger when in fact it was just average size or unexpectedly reduced due to the alcohol or the elements. But it’s taken the Canucks more than a decade to finally accept and acknowledge its shortcomings. That’s a lot of denial.
Notwithstanding the loss, Saturday’s game was not an abject failure. After all, 18,647 people paying hundreds of dollars for tickets and buying a few $12 beers is not too shabby. We’re just glad the Canucks have embraced who they really are and can hopefully live life more openly and honestly from now on. Who knows, maybe they’ll finally be able to admit that the Sedins are Swedish-built robots and that the clumps of hair people have been finding in community centre showers around Vancouver the past few years belong to Zack Kassian.
