Last night I went to a Utah Grizzleys hockey game. They’re the NHL affilliate team for the Dallas Start I think, so it’s almost pro hockey which I was really excited about since the NHL isn’t having a season this year.
Boy, was I disappointed. They STINK!!!
Seriously, the Grizzleys are terrible. It’s not that it’s not high quality, almost pro hockey. It’s that the Grizzley team is bad. They played the Minnesota Mighty Ducks (obviously the affiliate team of the anaheim mighty ducks) and just got the crap kicked out of them. The ducks were good (even though the Grizzleys won the game) and because of them you could tell that these were professional teams. However, if it weren’t for the ducks, I wouldn’t have though they were professional. The Grizzleys just did dumb things that a team at that level shouldn’t do. Their passes were NEVER stick to stick, they passed the puck in the air to each other for NO reason whatsoever, they turned the puck over in really bad circumstances, they made poor decisions with the puck… It was almost painful to watch them play because the Ducks were sooo much better.
What’s worse is how the organization was run. The E-Center, where they play their games is a nice arena (somewhat small…but none the less, nice) but they’re stupid there. Tickets were $20!!! I will never go back to see them play until they lower the price. Less than half the seats were filled and I’m sure they wonder why! This is Utah for one, people are cheap. Second, they SUCK! If they lowered their prices, they’d get more people in.
Also, I believe the team could do a much better job of marketing themselves. I’ve known about them for years but didn’t really know they were semi-pro.
Also, the E-Center is poorly run. During intermission and before the game they turned off all the lights in the arena and just had like a disco ball and some spotlights going so you couldn’t really see what was going on. They brought out a dance troop and just had some dim lights on them while they danced so you couldn’t even see them. STUPID. When I went into the bathroom they had some obnoxious techno music playing along with the commentary about the game. Because of the techno, you could hardly hear the radio. Because of the radio, you couldn’t enjoy (not that I would have anyway) the music.
Overall, the game was fun because hockey is fun to watch, but I won’t go back to another game until something there changes.