Posted by 
During the whole of the 2013-14 season I only went to see the Ottawa Senators twice, and strangely enough the two were back-to-back home games. For the first (March 18th against the Rangers) I had been fortunate enough to receive a last-minute phone call and attended with (and courtesy of) my good friend Huss. For this game (March 20th against Tampa Bay), I made a feeble attempt to pass it forward and invited m’lady’s brother-in-law (m’brother-in-law I suppose) to join me.
Somewhere along the way I had found myself with standing-room tickets to a Sens game and I thought it was great. The “seats” are along the upper rim of the arena, just behind the last row of the 300 level. All the way around the Palladium you’ll notice a little ledge up there, just wide enough for a beer and a painted number indicating who’s spot is who’s.
I’m a pretty fidgety guy at the best of times but when it comes to concerts and sporting events I generally get quite antsy. It’s a struggle for me to remain seated when I am forced to sit at such an event, so this standing room thing is definitely for me. Plus, the higher up you get at a hockey game the better you can see the plays unfold. From all the way up in standing-room it’s easy to visualize a bunch of x’s taking on a bunch of o’s down there on the ice and back in 2014 I was really getting into the strategy of hockey for the first time so I really appreciated that kind of viewpoint.
So like say, I think standing-room tickets are great. And they’re cheap too.
Of course I can see how someone might not agree with me on this. I can see how someone might just think it’s the cheapest seats in the house and that you’re getting what you pay for – a dismally distant view and heck, you don’t even get to sit down.
And I saw all this on m’brother-in-law’s face as we walked up, up, up to our perch along the upper rail and stood squinting down at the little tiny players on the ice. Did I mention that this was the first time we had ever hung out without the rest of the family, just him and I? We didn’t have a whole lot to talk about so I made conversation by pointing out the awesome and expensive seats that Huss and I had been sitting in down in the 100 level just two days earlier. That didn’t seem to help much.
Plus the Sens lost 5-4, and somehow the loss felt like it was all my fault.
At some point in the third period we found a pair of empty seats in the upper bowl and grabbed them. M’brother-in-law clearly preferred to sit which made me feel a bit better about the whole pass-it-forward thing, but I was still pretty fidgety.
Todd Man Out 