My First Panthers Game

For my birthday (last weekend), I went with my friend Kristen to the BB&T Center to watch the Panthers play the Bruins. I was obviously going to support the Bruins. Predictably, the Bruins kicked the piss out of the Panthers, outshooting them by 20 shots, leaving the score at Bruins 5, Panthers 2. Kristen and I had a blast time watching the game itself. I mean, it's hockey. Duh! I'm going to love it!

                                                             Some snaps from the game!

But the overall, the Panthers experience left me with these pros/cons:

Pros:

• Tickets are cheap.
• Easy to find great package deals - Duffy's, Living Social, etc.
• Navigating the parking lot and getting in/out was easy.
• Logistics of seating was easy.
• I loved that they had live tweets scrolling on the board! Awesome way to get fan interaction.
• The cons below are EASY to fix.

Cons:

• While every damn mascot for every damn team in Florida mascot showed up, there was NO EFFING KETCHUP ANYWHERE in the building.
• Way more away-team fans show up. (I obviously enjoyed being around tons of Bruins fans, but this is not a good thing for the Panthers' franchise).
• The lady working the concessions counter poured the canned soda I got into an open cup, and took the top off of Kristen's water and threw it away. Apparently this is their policy, and it makes absolutely no sense.
• The concessions lines were reallllllly slow. As in, people were screaming.
• The dancers... there were some girls who looked awesome, and could clearly dance... but as a group - "ratchet" is the word that came to mind.
• The entertainment on the ice in general was just... weird. The whole row of people I was sitting with were all giving each other quizzical looks. One half the rink had a bizarre hockey game with all of the mascots, and then the other half had two ice girls skating around with flags?
• The music... hockey music is typically high energy rock n' roll... I'd say they picked good songs 15% of the time.

Again, we had an absolute blast going to the game. But I wish I could sit down with the brand managers and marketing directors, and help them strategize a bit. Like I had mentioned above, the cons are all fixable things.

So despite the lack of ketchup, and the weirdness of the entertainment - I'll definitely be back again - I go to watch hockey.