Seats Still Available as Devils Prepare to Host Flyers in Home Opener

Seats are still available for tonight's New Jersey Devils 2013 regular-season home opener at Newark’s Prudential Center against the Philadelphia Flyers. Well, some of the more expensive ones, anyway.

A search of Ticketmaster.com revealed that many of the less expensive seats in the rafters for tonight's contest against the Flyers, whom the Devils eliminated in last year's Eastern Conference quarterfinals in five games, had already been purchased. Those are the seats of the $29 and $39 variety, at least for the so-called Classic games as listed on the Devils' website. For Premier games, against opponents such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the New York Rangers, those prices go up to $41 and $51, respectively. For special Devils Army games, those costs drop to $22 and $32, respectively.

Lower-level club seats, ranging from $108 to $303 apiece for tonight’s game, were still available as of 1 p.m. EST today on Ticketmaster. Goal Bar seats above the lower level were going for $164, while Restaurant Ledge seats on the opposite side of The Rock could be had for $301. Second-level or balcony seats were going for $79.75, while there were still some center-ice seats in the lower sections of the upper bowl, or mezzanine, available for $108 each.

Less than 300 tickets total for Flyers-Devils were available on StubHub as of 1:15 p.m. EST. Prices ranged from $49 in the upper level to $265 for club seats. (Me, I miss the old $20 nosebleeds at the Meadowlands, even if you had to walk up, oh, 65 steps to get from the concourse to the rafters. Oh well.)

The anger vented by numerous hockey fans at both the owners and players during the recently-concluded lockout that had dragged on since October and threatened to cancel another NHL campaign seems to have quickly subsided. Fans have seemingly flocked right back to NHL rinks, and Saturday's 2-1 win by the Devils on Long Island at the venerable 16,170-seat Nassau Coliseum was sold out.

“It was fun,” said Devils long-time goaltender Martin Brodeur at NHL.com of the opening-night atmosphere against the Islanders, in which he made 19 saves. “There was a lot of speculation about the fans, how they're going to react to us coming back, but you come into a building that's usually empty and it's packed, I think it's great … The atmosphere was as good as I've played here.”

We’ll see what happens in Newark tonight against Philly. Good seats still available.