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The NHL announced the start times on Thursday for the Eastern Conference playoff matches and the Leafs and Bruins will faceoff at 8 p.m. ET in Boston on Saturday, a bit later than the usual 7 p.m. puck drop for Toronto.

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It’s a long flight to Nashville from Vancouver. 

Over 3200 kilometres separate the two cities. With the Vancouver Canucks slated to play the Nashville Predators in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it’s easily the longest travel distance of any of the first-round match-ups. In fact, It’s a longer distance between two cities than all of the Eastern Conference match-ups combined.

But some intrepid Canucks fans were planning on making the trip. It’s the first time in nine years that Canucks fans have had a chance to see their favourite team in the playoffs in person, so it’s understandable that they would want to make the most of the opportunity. 

Unfortunately, fans looking for tickets to Canucks/Predators playoff games in Nashville were in for a rude awakening when they checked Ticketmaster.

Fans were greeted with a warning on the Ticketmaster site that they would be unable to buy tickets from outside of the “Nashville Predators television viewing area – Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.”

“To better serve Nashville predators fans, a restricted sales area has been implemented,” reads the warning. “Residency will be based on credit card billing address. Orders by residents outside the viewing area will be canceled without notice and refunds given.”

Because the restriction uses the buyer’s billing address, this could even affect Predators fans from outside of the select states who might be temporary residents in Tennessee, such as students at Vanderbilt University.

Teams have done this before in the playoffs. Notably, the Florida Panthers restricted ticket sales to American residents only for their second-round match-up against the Toronto Maple Leafs last year. The intent is clearly to give priority to local fans and prevent opposing fans from filling the arena.

This is also nothing new for the Predators, who even have certain games on their regular season calendar where they restrict sales as well.

“Preds have certain “Gold Games” like Saturday games where they restrict sales to local in hopes of filling the arena with Pred fans,” said one Reddit user. “I’m a season ticket holder and there are games that we cannot even transfer the tickets. The only option is to attend or donate them.”

Canucks fans don’t even have the option of buying tickets on the secondary market. Sites like StubHub use Ticketmaster Ticket Transfers to pass tickets along from the original buyer but the message on the Ticketmaster site says, “Ticket Transfers will be disabled for this event.”

This has understandably upset Canucks fans who were hoping to make the trip.

That includes fans who were hoping to travel from closer to Tennessee, like this fan from Illinois:

Seemingly the only option for fans to buy tickets to the Canucks playoff games in Nashville is to have friends or family who live in the area who can buy the tickets for them. 

PITB has reached out to the Predators for comment but did not receive a reply by publication. 

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