Saskatoon's 60+ hockey league still going strong after more than 30 years
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League co-founder Stan Halliwell, 90, still laces up his skates and gets on the ice.
With the Saskatoon Blades and the Regina Pats meeting for the final time Monday night, another sell-out crowd is expected at Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre.
“It’s the hottest ticket in the province,” said Scott Ford, executive director at SaskTel Centre.
Ford said there were about 800 tickets remaining for sale around noon on Monday, but he was anticipating a full sell-out for the final Blades-Pats showdown.
“It’s so exciting,” Ford said — for staff, players and sports fans alike.
“I can’t recall when I’ve seen a match up that’s drawn so much attention in the province.”
Calling it a “power series,” Ford said the exciting back-and-forth series between two great teams — plus the excitement of Connor Bedard — has injected extra thrill into these playoff games.
“These are big wins for the city of Saskatoon,” Ford noted.
He said the out-of-province traffic to Saskatoon as a result has been “phenomenal,” and very economically beneficial for Saskatoon businesses and the city in general.
Even with so many people coming to such a high-stakes game — what could be Connor Bedard’s final WHL game if the Blades secure a win — Ford wasn’t expecting any trouble associated with the game.
In spite of an incident at a previous game in the series at SaskTel Centre where a man was seen kicking a parking attendant, Ford said there is a code of conduct for all fans attending the event centre based on mutual respect.
Ford said all staff, and parking attendants in particular, do their job and follow the directions they’ve been given to try to park fans in the most efficient way possible.
For fans who might be used to a different parking system, Ford warned that the big-capacity crowd means the traffic flow will be different than normal to accommodate the demand.
“Things change, so please, be respectful. They’re just doing their job. They want you to have a great experience,” he said.
No additional police will be on site for the game.
Ford is also not anticipating any hooliganism or other problematic events, though he noted the centre has a full team of venue staff and security working the event.
He noted he hasn’t seen any concerning groups or fans getting physical or disrespectful so far, and anticipates the same respectful behaviour Monday night.
Having been at all the Saskatoon games so far, Ford said Pats and Blades fans are “all the same: They’re just here to watch good hockey and have a good time.”
Ford said doors will open an extra half-hour earlier than normal — at 5:30 p.m. — for fans to find their seats as smoothly as possible before the 7 p.m. pick drop.
The message is simple, Ford explained: every person attending the game is being encouraged to come early to accommodate the 15,000 fans expected to attend.
Carpooling is encouraged, so is using services like the shuttle busses that will be offered from three Saskatoon malls: Lawson Heights, Centre Mall and Confederation Mall.
The shuttle busses are a free service that were offered during the final two regular-season games that sold out in March. Ford said the service was just reinstated for this final game given the volume of fans anticipated.
Fans interested in using that service can park at one of the three locations and ride the shuttle to the SaskTel Centre. The shuttles will return to the mall parking lots they came from to bring fans back after the game.
— With files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff