Osgood excited to be back
Chelios isn’t the only player happy to return for another year in Detroit. Chris Osgood is elated to come back to Hockeytown. Even when Osgood played for the Islanders and Blues, he didn’t sell his house in Northville and remained close friends to many Wings players. He even followed the team closely. After being gone for three years, Osgood was excited to sign a one year contract for $900,000.
“I’m thrilled about this,” said Osgood. “I really missed playing in Detroit. You don’t realize what you had until you don’t have it anymore…I really thought I would be back. It was fun to play on Long Island (with the Islanders) and St. Louis. But I always missed the atmosphere here. It’s just different. You don’t see it in a lot of cities…Detroit fans are passionate. They love their team and they want their team to do well. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
The starting goaltender position will be based on Osgood and his close friend, Manny Legace, performances in training camp and then early in the season. “There’s going to be no animosity between us,” he said. “We’ll be pulling for each other.”
Wings ticket prices remain the same
While many teams have cut back on ticket prices, the Detroit Red Wings ticket prices will not be changing from the 2003-2004 prices. Tickets will range from $22-$85 and average around $57.
The $39 million figure is misleading,” General Manager Ken Holland said, citing $6 million committed to players no longer with the team, an estimated $5 million contribution to revenue sharing and potentially $5 million in bonuses.David Miller of West Bloomfield Township, who has had tickets for 25 years, said he won’t renew. “I know friends of mine weren’t planning to do so either unless they got a discount,” Miller said. “With the economy the way it is in Detroit, I would suspect many other people won’t be either.”
The Wings have 17,000 season-ticket holders and a waiting list of 14,000.
Season ticket holders will get what the Wings call “Joe Bucks,” 5% of their ticket money that fans can use for concessions and merchandise at Joe Louis Arena.
I’m disappointed that the Wings didn’t reduce ticket prices. The team salary was cut nearly in half, but the prices aren’t. I realize that the Wings can charge what they want and people will still come. And those that cancel their season tickets will be grabbed by one of the 14,000 on the waiting list (including me). Ottawa and Los Angeles reduced their season ticket prices by 5%; Chicago 10%. Toronto, Colorado, Buffalo, and Phoenix also reduced ticket prices.
It’s awesome hearing that from Ozzie! Bringing him back has made me a lot more excited about the season. It’s great he signed for only $900,000, leaving plenty of room to negotiate with Datsyuk and Zetterberg.
On ticket prices, that’s just absolute crap. I really hope people don’t buy tickets, and Ilitch is forced to lower them. Just because there is a waitlist of 14,000 doesn’t mean all those people are willing to pay that much. I’m on that list somewhere, and it’s mostly so I get tickets sometime between when I’m 30-40 yrs old. When I hope tickets are affordable. It doesn’t cost anything to be on the waitlist other than 5 seconds of your time, so I doubt all those names are really willing to spend the money. Right now I’m not planning on spending ANY money this season on merchandise/tickets or anything NHL related, only the time of watching games on TV.
Joe Bucks isn’t saving fans at all…fans deserve the 5-10% rollback in ticket prices INTO their pockets, not DEFERRED to concessions. That’s an empty gesture.
Red Wings tickets are fairly reasonable, especially at the upper end. I have admired the fact that he Wings didn’t charge much more when they could have. As crappy as the Blackhawks have been the last decade, their ticket prices are far higher, even with the 10% cut Glass seats at the United Center are $250.
That’s the downside of being so popular. Since the tickets are in such high demand, there’s no reason for them to cut ticket prices. They could have even gotten away with raising ticket prices without ruffling so many feathers that it would hurt them.
In markets where the tickets aren’t in such high demand it makes perfect sense to lower prices. My ‘Canes, for example… Most nights, you can get a ticket at the gate. Not a great seat, but a seat nonetheless. The point is we don’t sell out many games. Visiting teams always have good fan turnout because of this and because of the high number of transplanted northerners (lots of Buffalo, Boston and Philly fans in the area) in the Research Triangle Park area.
In Raleigh, it wasn’t an option. The team HAD to lower ticket prices or lose fans. Peter Karamanos claims that over 90% of season-ticket holders stayed on board during the lockout, which is encouraging, but our number of season ticket holders is nothing compared to that in traditional hockey markets.
For the record (this might make you mad), my season ticket package was discounted by about 20%, and rumor has it there are some corporate packages that were reduced by 32%.
Oh well, we’re just poor college students anyway and couldn’t very well afford season tickets even if they’d reduced the price so much. Like Brian, I got on the waiting list with the expectation that my turn would come up when I’m in my late 20s - early 30s or so and could hopefully afford the tickets. If I suddenly got something in the mail saying it was my turn, I’d have to drop out of school if I wanted season tickets and I’m sure as heck not doing that.
For me, my Dad wants season tickets just as much as I want it. So we’re both on the list and we’d find a way to pay for the tickets. I just hope that tickets become available to me sometime in my lifetime…
When I told my Dad, he wasn’t surprised about ticket prices staying the same (and to be honest, I wasn’t really either), but when I told him about Joe Bucks- he got upset. To say that you’re giving a “discount” but the money still goes back to the Wings.