Kraken tickets continue to surge following upset series victory in Round 1
May 1, 2023, 12:24 PM
The Seattle Kraken celebrate their 2-1 win against the Colorado Avalanche in Game Seven of the First Round of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Ball Arena on April 30, 2023 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
After upsetting the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche — winning 2-1 in Game 7 Sunday — the Seattle Kraken are advancing to the second round of the NHL playoffs in just its second season of existence.
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While Seattle’s home games at Climate Pledge Arena have yet to be scheduled for Games 3 and 4 — with the first two games of the series occurring on the road in Dallas against the fourth-seeded Stars — the cheapest tickets are already going for nearly $400, according to . The most expensive tickets are north of $3,000.
Playoff tickets for Round 1 came were sold in a frenzy, with as many as 2,000 people attempting to get tickets at the same time through online portals, according to . The tickets for Game 1 started at $250.
Game 6, if necessary, will also be played at Climate Pledge Arena.
The Dallas Stars beat the Minnesota Wild in six games in its first-round series, its first playoff series victory since losing the Stanley Cup to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020.
While the Kraken’s early success shocked many within the NHL, the franchise’s early success was not unprecedented. The Las Vegas Golden Knights went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final after a 12-3 postseason run in its inaugural season in 2018, a first for a newly formed team since 1968 — when the league was just 12 teams.
The NHL reworked its expansion draft rules in 2017, giving both Las Vegas and Seattle the ability to choose a minimum of 20 players under contract with an aggregate expansion draft value between 60-100% of the prior season’s upper limit for the salary cap. Current NHL teams could only protect seven forwards, three defensemen, and one goalie — opening pathways for immediate success.
“Vegas did a good job taking advantage of the rules and sort of everyone’s lack of experience in that environment,” Kraken General Manager Ron Francis told reporters, according to . “Last time where GMs were more willing to, in a sense, overpay to protect certain assets, this time they learned from that and they weren’t willing to make the mistakes that they made last time.”
