But I knew I liked hockey, and we had a bunch of young kids who I thought might feel the same. So Terry and I took the plunge and bought two season tickets for the Monsters' first season.
Actually, we got involved so early that the Monsters didn't yet have a name when we wrote our first check to "Cleveland Pro Hockey Ltd" or some such legal entity. I was at then-Gund Arena when they later announced what the team would be called.
Since then they have morphed into the "Cleveland" Monsters, and we recently finished our 19th year as full season ticket holders.
That puts us in relatively rare air. Back in 2016-17, the team's 10th year of existence, they put the names of those of us who had been full season ticket holders (officially "Monsters Hockey Club members") from the very beginning on one of the dasher boards at ice level. Here's Jared and me posing with that list of names in February 2017:
While there may appear to be quite a few people there, it's still a small list when you consider the team now averages more than 11,000 fans a game and annually leads the American Hockey League in attendance.
Next season is the Monsters' 20th, and I hope they do something similar to recognize those of us who took the plunge early and never left.
More importantly, I can't say enough about what a great thing the Monsters Hockey Club has been for our family.
In 2020, the team was kind enough to make a video about us that was shown several times on the arena "Humungotron" and shared on the Monsters' social media channels:
Of greater worth is the one-on-one time I've spent over the years with Terry and each of the kids at those games. Sometimes we watch and comment on the hockey, other times hockey is just the background to deeper conversations about life.
We've also met many wonderful fellow hockey fans who sit near us, some of whom I chronicled in this blog post.
We've cheered game-winning goals, mourned lost opportunities, and eaten more arena popcorn than anyone probably should.
Recently I tried to calculate how much money we've spent on Monsters hockey over these two decades. I don't have records of how much we've paid each year for our tickets, but I seem to remember them being as cheap as $1,700 total for the first season and as expensive as $3,000 for the 2026-27 season (which in fairness includes a couple of hundred additional dollars for the AHL All-Star Game being held next year in Cleveland...also in fairness, we have really good seats).
Figure our average ticket outlay over the years has been somewhere in the middle, say $2,300 a year. Multiply that by 20 years and you get $46,000. Then there's the food and team apparel we've bought, which is somewhere well north of $5,000 at this point.
All told, we've sunk $50K+ into this team – and it has been worth every penny.
I had no idea it would last this long for us, and now I can't foresee a time when we're not season ticket holders for our favorite local hockey team.
I've already told my 9-month-old grandson Cal how much I can't wait to take him to the arena. He smiles back at me indulgently, figuring that whatever Grandpa is saying, it must be something fun.
Oh, it is, buddy, it really is.
Go Monsters!
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