I think what happened here is that the general tickets for this regional have been on sale for months.The only team that KNOWS they will be there however, is UNH as they have to be assigned there as the host school. Thus all the UNH fans scooped up the tickets. They were available to anyone but no other schools fans can be confident enough to make the purchase and then just hope that is where their school plays. I know its been known for quite some time on the USCHO message board that this regional is sold out (which is why all the BC fans are hoping for Albany as well) Since most regionals dont sell out, I dont think you can blame the NCAA or the regional site for making the tickets available early.
>From: Alexis Wollstadt <
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>Reply-To: The Maine Hockey Discussion List <
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>To:
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>Subject: Re: UMaine Release on Regional Tickets
>Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:32:06 -0500
>
>Deron Treadwell wrote:
><
>(non UNH) schools at the Manchester Regional.
>
>There should have been enough tickets set aside for each of the schools that
>will be selected to the Northeast Regional.>>
>
>
>Do we know for sure that the Manchester Regional DID NOT set aside allotments for participating schools?
>
>I suspect that they did, but that Maine's allotment (should they be assigned to Manchester) was snapped up by donors and season ticket holders. I believe that Maine's policy is to make tickets available to donors (Black Bear Fund) and season ticket holders before the public even gets a shot.
>
>Forms are sent to members of those groups, asking how many tickets to which regionals folks want. If total requests for tickets is 1500 and our participating school allotment is only 1000, there are 500 people who don't get those tickets. The decision on who gets those ticket is made by starting with the largest donors and going down from there.
>
>~Lexy~