My Penguin history goes back the whole way to December 18, 1971. It was the first game I ever attended and even though the Pens lost to the Boston Bruins, I was hooked. Getting to see Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito play live was an amazing experience. We went back to the Christmas Day game vs. Montreal which ended in a 4-2 Penguin victory thanks to Les Binkley’s stellar performance in goal. Guy LaFleur and Yvan Cournoyer added to the star power that was Montreal then. Back at that time, the average attendance per game was 10,000 and sellouts were few and far between.
The next year we bought partial season tickets and the highlight of that Fall was the November 22, 1972 game versus the hated St. Louis Blues. In this game the Pens trailed 4-3 going into the third period, and then scored 7 third period goals including the NHL record 5 goals in 2 minutes 7 seconds – a record that will probably never be broken. People were literally dancing in the aisles over the excitement that third period generated – final score 10-4 when we walked out of the Civic Arena. We started sitting in section C22 and our tickets were $5.50 per game.
By 1975, the balcony seats had been installed at the Arena so we moved there and became the only people to ever own the rights to section E11 row F of the Civic Arena seating. From that point on we kept our season tickets – the 1983-84 season attendance dropped to an average of 6800 per year.
Once Lemieux was drafted in 1984 attendance started to rise to its present day sellout levels at Consol. The All-Star game was hosted in 1990 and Lemieux scored four goals. We stayed at the Chatham Center hotel the night of the game and our son was able to get signatures from Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretsky, Paul Coffey, Rick Tocchet, and Joe Sakic to name a few.
1991 ushered in the year of our Stanley Cup win with a huge group of us heading for the airport to celebrate the Penguin victory. The remaining history from that Cup to the current team’s Cup win in 2009 and the end time of the Civic Arena in 2010 has been the start of a new epic Penguin era.
Our seats in Section 207 at the Consol Energy Center serve as our home in our new facility. It’s been an amazing journey being in love with the Pittsburgh Penguins and hockey, and I’m looking forward to our first Stanley Cup win at the Consol.
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