EDMONTON – An Edmonton man is $147,000 richer after winning the 50-50 draw from the Team Canada vs. USA World Junior hockey game. But the 6-figure draw upset quite a few fans at Rexall Place on Saturday night when the winning number wasn’t announced at the game as it usually is.
Instead, fans were told to go to the Hockey Canada website to find out if they had won – something that generated a chorus of boo’s throughout the crowd.
Organizers say they just weren’t prepared for how many people entered the draw that night.
“It’s one of those things that we had no idea would go as high and as fast as it did,” says Co-Chair of the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championship, Lyle Best. “What happened is we only had 12 printers and you have to print every single ticket. So that’s like 300,000 tickets and we had a backlog in the queue of printing so we weren’t able to announce the winning ticket in the game.”
Another issue that seemed to irritate fans was information on the Hockey Canada website that the winner would have to go to Calgary to claim their prize.
“We would’ve flown them here and given the cheque to them on centre ice, but that’s another story,” says Best.
“Reality is, an Edmonton person won it, was in the office (Sunday) morning at 8 o’clock and went home with $147,000.”