Resale sellers asking as much as $12K for Stanley Cup final tickets in Edmonton

Tickets for all three possible Edmonton games in the Oilers' battle against the Florida Panthers sold out within minutes on Wednesday, with fans clamouring to see the Oilers' first chance in 18 years to win the Stanley Cup.

The Oilers begin the best-of-seven series Saturday night in Florida. Games 3, 4 and, if necessary, 6 will be in Edmonton.

Tickets weren't cheap for people who managed to get them when sales opened at noon MT, with the lowest-priced options still running several hundred dollars.

Fans still hoping to play "La Bamba" for an Oilers win in person can still get seats up for resale, but they'll be shelling out a lot more.

Ticketmaster's cheapest ticket resale options for Game 3 start around $1,200, and some of the prime seats closer to the ice are running as high as $12,000 for Game 6.

On Wednesday, resale sites StubHub and SeatGeek had individual tickets on sale for around $1,300. Prices were higher in the upper deck, and $2,000 to $3,000 per seat around the ends of the lower bowl.

Edmontonians who aren't planning a trip to Florida to see the away games can still go to Rogers Place for a watch party in the arena — but tickets are now going for $20, up from $5 entry in prior playoff rounds.

The last time the Oilers had a playoff run this deep, in 2006, Edmonton games were still hosted at the city's old north-side arena, then called Rexall Place. Now, NHL action is in Rogers Place downtown, with huge tailgate parties outside the arena in the so-called "Moss Pit."

Restaurant and bar owners downtown say the Oilers mania is showing up at their doors too.

Patrick Kehdy, with the Canadian Brewhouse Group of Companies, said Edmonton hockey fans show up to watch their team no matter what, but the latest playoff excitement is on a different level.

At the Canadian Icehouse directly across from Rogers Place, "Once the Oilers won in Game 6 [against the Dallas Stars], it broke our reservation tracker, pretty much. We had to turn it off," Kehdy said.

"Saturday is going to be bananas here … It's an away game, and we're ready to do as much sales, if not more, than a home game."

A bit farther from the arena, Susan Forsey owns Rocky Mountain Icehouse on Jasper Avenue. She said the pub did two to three times the business of a typical day during the last playoff game.

"Everybody's just thrilled about the Oilers … and going out again, because a lot of people weren't coming back downtown after COVID," she said.

"And now all of a sudden everybody wants to be downtown, and it's nice because downtown had a little bit of a bad rap, unnecessarily."

Playoff success spurs run on Oilers merch

At Edmonton's United Sport and Cycle, general manager Kelly Hodgson says the longer the playoff run lasts, the more Oilers merchandise flies off the shelves.

"Sales and team performance are directly correlated with each other," he said.

"Throughout the course of the season, people would decorate themselves with a jersey or a T-shirt or maybe a ball cap. But when it comes to playoff times, it's the things like the wigs and the chains and the face paint and the temporary tattoos that we start to sell a lot of."

But while some businesses are reaping the benefits of Edmonton's hockey success now, Concordia University economist Moshe Lander warns against making too much of the economic boost.

"Everybody's going to get their credit card bill from this deep playoff run and they're going to go, 'What are we going to do? How are we going to scale back?'"

Lander said in the big picture, new economic activity isn't being generated — it's just temporarily moving between different types of businesses, with people still left with a finite amount of disposable income.

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself. It's just, let's not make this some sort of economic boom for Edmonton that it's really not."

Hodgson said he notices that in his store too. He's expecting to run out of Oilers jerseys if the series goes all the way to Game 7, which would see Stanley Cup buzz last more than two weeks.

But he said that means people might put off other purchases he'd see from them, like a new mountain bike.

"People only have so much money," he said.

"For right now, some people are saying, 'I need to be involved in the game.'"