Ottawa Senators playoff fever is building with tickets in high demand

Shane Pinto of the Ottawa Senators celebrates his first period goal against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Photo by Chris Tanouye/Freestyle Photo /Getty ImagesArticle content

The Ottawa Senators’ inbox was overflowing in the hours after the club qualified for the playoffs for the first time in eight years.

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Get your tickets, folks. There are plenty of good seats available for post-season home games, but that may not be the case when they go on sale to the general public between April 15 and April 18.

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Cyril Leeder, the club’s CEO and president, told reporters on Wednesday that the Senators will give playoff priority to existing and new season ticket holders before opening up single-game seats as the club returns to the postseason for the first time since 2017.

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“We’ve had a lot of frenzy in the last 24 hours,” Leeder said. “We sold 50 season seats yesterday and we had over 200 inquiries last night after we clinched, which is a lot for us.

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“That’s exciting that we’ve added more than 600 new season-seat holders in the last six weeks and we expect that to continue as we head to the playoffs. We’ve got some work to do to rebuild our season-seat base. And nothing helps that more than getting into the playoffs. That’s huge.”

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The expectation is that the Senators could open their first-round series on April 20 on the road. That means the first two home games here would be held around April 24 to April 26.

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“We’ll go out to our season seat owners and make sure they’ve got what they need. Then, we’ll go to our new season seat owners. That’s going to take place, probably for another week, and then we’ll assess our inventory,” Leeder said.

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The Senators don’t release season-ticket numbers, but Leeder has never hidden the fact that the first goal is to get the club back to the 10,000 mark, which would be a huge step closer to the league average of 11,000.

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A long playoff run can help assist with those sales, but Leeder noted he doesn’t have a percentage increase goal in mind. He noted the further the club can go, the better it is for the business side and selling seats.

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“We expect this year to be quite a big lift because we haven’t been there in eight years,” Leeder said. “We noticed in the 2000s that the further you went (in the playoffs), the more the numbers went up. We’ll get that benefit early this year because it has been eight years.”

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The Senators could still face the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers, Washington Capitals or Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round when the dust settles at the end of the season.