A Ticket To Bond 

Mill Creek resident Derik Nacke indulges in far more than Kraken hockey games when using his season tickets.

Nacke, 53, a global supply chain manager for computer parts, and his daughter, Taylor, 18, have been Section 117 mainstays at Climate Pledge Arena the past few seasons. So much so, they’ve developed an entire social network of season ticket member friends hanging out together in that section.

“We just all became sort of this tight-knit group and do stuff during the off-season together,” Nacke said. “Our son graduated from college last year and they all came up for my son’s graduation party. So, it becomes kind of a big thing. We all have our chat group and things going on. Even the ushers and other staff up there, we’ve gotten to be good friends, and we’re constantly texting each other about different stuff.

“It’s come to be one big family.”

Recent Kraken changes for season ticket members, including price reductions or freezes for 90% of bowl seating, a 25% discount on arena food and beverage and increased events outside beyond the games, have placed renewed focus on the overall experience of fans paying for seat plans. For some, the price reductions were enough to get them to give up plans to dump their season tickets.

David Ryder, 70, a lawyer living in Green Lake, said he was about to abandon his seats and was “shocked” when the team dropped its pricing.

“I’ve had season tickets for everybody, and I’ve just never seen that happen,” Ryder said. “I’ve seen prices stay up. I’ve seen prices stay level. But these went down. And it wasn’t just a token drop -- I think mine is going to be something like 20% if my math is good. And it would still be a 15% drop if I renewed year-by-year.

“And I just felt like ‘Wow, I got a real sign out of ownership that I’m valued.’ And I figured I’d meet them halfway. They won me back with a real decisive move that said: ‘You’re valued.’”

But for other season ticket members, while appreciating lowered prices as well, the lasting friendships formed around them have made going to the rink a part of daily life. For these fans, the extra planned events announced by the Kraken, getting them closer to players, the arena and other season ticket members also hold great appeal.

Woodinville resident Jared Ream and his wife, Michelle, have gotten to know people in their Section 15 so well that a few of them even volunteered at a motorcycle club non-profit he runs to support military veterans in need.

“They’ll do volunteer work, they’ll donate their seats and also give monetary donations,” Ream said.

Not all people he meets have been season ticket members like him since the franchise’s opening. One of the couples in front of them stopped going when the husband passed away, but he’s quickly formed “a pretty good relationship” with those who replaced them and has others around him who’ve been there all four seasons.

“The funny thing is, I was not a sports fan in any way, shape or form,” he said. “I never grew up playing or any of that stuff. But then my wife said to me, ‘Let’s buy hockey tickets,’ and I said ‘OK’ and after Game 1 it was insane. I was like a little kid on chocolate cake. You could not break me away from it.”

For Sacha Coughran, 51, her decision to go in on a season ticket plan with a friend who’d transplanted here from Michigan was borne out of an experience from the team’s debut season. Coughran had gone to a handful of games that year prior to being diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2022.

Soon after, she brought a sign to the game stating “Hockey tonight, chemo tomorrow,” that got shown on the Climate Pledge twin scoreboards to where Kraken players were giving her stick taps. Coughran had been seated in the arena’s upper-level sections and didn’t see the player's gesture, but the event got amplified on social media to where friends let her know it had become a thing.

Fast forward to the summer and Coughran, fresh off surgery, was asked by her friend whether she’d go in on season tickets for the team’s second campaign. Buoyed by her prior experience and its connection to her cancer, Coughran agreed. The following January, on her “Cancer-versary” day of being diagnosed, she posted on social media about being in remission and going to that night’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

That got noticed by the Kraken, who amplified the message and upgraded her seats for the night. Others began telling Coughran during subsequent games they’d seen her social media message and it became an icebreaker of sorts.

She’d already gone the prior month to a Christmas toy drive at Kraken-owned 32 Bar & Grill.

“I ended up meeting all of these people that I wound up becoming friends with afterwards,” she said. “And so now, I have friends outside the games where we do other things that have nothing to do with hockey.”

Some of them got together last weekend for the team’s annual “Paint the Ice” event for season ticket members. Though most of her friends don’t sit in her section, she’ll meet up with them during games.

“I feel like everybody has their own kind of routine they do at a game,” she said. “We like to get there and then we go down and do the loop – we walk around downstairs, see if there are any freebie giveaways, decide what we’re going to eat.

“And quite frequently, since everybody has their own routine, you’ll start to see the same people at certain things. So, there’s that other kind of community. I like it. It just makes me excited.”

For supply chain manager Nacke, he has so much fun hanging out with his regular crew of fans that his routine includes almost never missing a game. And it’s not just him feeling that way; his daughter started going to the games with him when some of his partners on the seats relocated out of town for work.

“She became the biggest hockey fan,” he said.

To the point where he once got in big trouble when he listed his seats for sale online during a period in which he’d be away overseas on business for three weeks.

“I think my daughter just about killed me,” he said. “So, I think I sold maybe one game, and then my daughter figured out who she’d be taking with her and used the seats from there.

“So, it’s now forbidden in our family to sell our tickets. We enjoy them too much.”