After the San Jose Sharks drafted Macklin Celebrini they started taking advantage of that bit of momentum to try and get people into SAP Center again, as evidenced by them giving my dad a call for the first time in 25 years after the last time he had season tickets, back when I was in high school. He assumed they were looking for our company to advertise and directed the caller to me. It turned out the representative just wanted to sell some tickets, and in the end, I bought a pair for the 2024-25 season.

I stopped paying attention to the Sharks and hockey after the team blew a 3-0 series lead two years after having to win Game 7 in another series they had been up 3-0 in. The odds of that being random bad luck were miniscule, it was clear Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were not guys to have leading your team outside of the regular season. I didn’t even pay attention when they went to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2016.

But I had, in recent years and with the destruction of Major League Baseball by its owners, come to learn that NHL hockey was a much improved product these days, with skill allowed to do its thing. And I had gotten into a pretty big rut as far as doing things outside the house since COVID, and saw getting out to these games as a way to rejoin civilization.

I told myself I was just getting the tickets to enjoy seeing some good hockey and not getting back into Sharks fandom, but that idea turned to shit pretty quick and I was hooked again by seeing Macklin Celebrini do abnormally excellent things every night. I didn’t watch road games on tv because the team still stank too much to bother with that, but I was a Sharks fan.

I still am, but the team has already gotten to work eroding that feeling with enshittification of the experience, even for supposedly valued Sharks 365 members such as myself.

When it was time to renew late last season, the team offered to have me signup for three years with a locked in 3% annual increase, and also like $560 in their Teal Tokens each year. I had reservations about signing up for anything with a private enterprise, knowing that they are out to fuck me, but put those aside thinking that there was not that much they could do.

Then they immediately, in the first year of the agreement, concocted the worst home schedule in league history, with seven home back-to-backs and eight total home games that are the second night of back-to-backs. Unprecedented, and not explained by the condensed Olympic schedule.

I aired my disappointment to the team and was told to go screw, but in their weaselly explanation to me it became clear that this was done intentionally, because they can’t get people into the arena on weekdays.

I still go to all the games, but have tickets for pretty much every game up for sale. Some sell, and I also play some games with the ticket exchange program so I have account credit, and games that sell I just buy myself one seat to go to the game alone. Given that I live a ten minute walk from the arena, I am cool doing that. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t, but I do.

But I spend a ton less money on other things like merchandise. And now as the petty wars heat up, I’m saving even more.

You see, a modern development in the concessions game, I guess, is to sell 20-oz bottled soft drinks and not syrup-mixed soda into cups with ice. Coke, and in my case Zero Sugar Coke, is much better in ice whether it’s poured out of the bottle or a syrup mix. Last year, and for the first handful of games this year, I could just go and get a cup of ice from one of the bars in the Club area. (Actually, out of embarrassment at requesting that as a grown man, I would have either my quasi-stepdaughter or quasi-niece do it if they were my companion for a game.)

But, as of two weeks ago, the bartenders also tell them to go screw now when the request is made. Cups are tracked, they say, they cannot give out freebies. Of cheap as fuck cups and some ice. They can’t do it anymore.

The team will take offense at me blaming this on them. I know with certainty that they would say this is an Aramark thing. And that they are completely handcuffed about what happens in their own damn facility.

So, I don’t have to have a drink with my food. Starting with the last game, Thursday night against the Kings, I’m not getting a damn soda or bottled water or whatever. I’ll get my food with my $15 allowance per game and 20% off, and then burn through a lot fewer of the teal tokens without needing to pay $6 for a soda. The Sharks, or Aramark or whoever, shall lose hundreds of dollars in soda revenue from me in exchange for saving probably about a dollar in cup costs for the rest of the season.

Nice job, dipshits. I will out-petty you fucks every time.