Montrealers are excited to see the Habs face the Toronto Maple Leafs at home Saturday.
Thanks to easing COVID-19 restrictions, 2,500 fans will be allowed inside the Bell Centre to cheer on the home team for Game 6 of the NHL playoff series.
“First time back and they’re gonna blow the roof off the place,” said Habs fan Paul Asselin.
But if you want to be one of those cheering fans, get your wallets ready because it’s going to cost you.
Some re-sale tickets were available on Friday, the most expensive going for almost $9,300 at 4 p.m. That was for the sole available individual ticket sold on Ticketmaster.
Prices kept going up by the hour.
The rest of the tickets available on the platform are sold in pairs, with the cheapest set sold at $1,167.27 as of 6:40 p.m.
Habs fan Matthew Lachapelle said he would love to go “if the ticket prices weren’t that outrageous.”
“I mean I do cherish my kidneys and I’m not willing to sell one,” Lachapelle joked.
Instead, Lachapelle says that he’ll decide last-minute where to watch the game.
“One of the perks of things reopening is I get to say ‘I don’t know, we’ll see,” said Lachapelle. “I think that being able to say ‘we’ll see what we do and we’ll see what happens and we’ll decide when we get there’ is just an amazing feeling but for sure we’ll do something.”
Pub owners such as Stuart Ashton are ready to welcome fans like Lachapelle.
“We have a TV that we put outside on the wall, and we will be just managing crowd control … and serve good food and beer,” said Ashton, co-owner of McLean’s Pub in downtown Montreal whose patio opened for the first time in months on Friday.
“It’s good for the city and it’s good for the pub.”
The puck drops at the Bell Centre on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.