Carolina Hurricanes to Florida Panthers Fans: No Tickets for You

What goes around comes around when it comes to the sale of NHL Stanley Cup playoff tickets as the Carolina Hurricanes are geographically restricting tickets to their series against the Florida Panthers.

On Carolina’s ticket portal, there is a warning that tickets can only be purchased by those with credit card billing addressed within North Carolina, South Carolina and some parts of southern Virginia.

The Panthers created quite a stir (at least in Canada) when they initially placed a restriction on ticket sales to their second-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Florida’s ticket limitation lasted for the first day of ticket sales and only allowed those with credit card billing addresses within the United States to purchase tickets.

The Panthers put tickets on sale for their home games in these Eastern Conference finals on Saturday morning.

There are no any geographical restrictions this time around.

When the Panthers put the brakes on allowing those with a Canadian address from buying tickets, team president Matt Caldwell told FHN that the ban was so Florida fans — theoretically — had the first shot at the available ducats.

“For the first 24 hours or so, we’re trying to restrict the sales for our Florida fans,’’ Caldwell said. “It is just an access thing so our fans can get tickets. We are going to allow tickets to be sold to Toronto fans eventually. … We just wanted to make sure Panthers fans had access and that doesn’t mean all of our fans have Florida billing addresses.”

It was not well received in Canada — at all.

Not only was it a big story when the tickets went on sale on May 1, but Canadian media outlets were still talking about it a week later.

The Panthers not only lifted the restriction after one day (and raised the prices on the remaining tickets) but did not try to restrict Toronto fans from buying tickets off the secondary resale market.

Florida fans are apparently up in arms over this snub from Carolina with all of the local television and radio sports shows doing stories on the Hurricanes’ ban.

OK,  that’s not true.

At all.

The talk around Toronto these days is probably not about Florida’s ticket policies, not after the Maple Leafs lost to the Panthers in Game 5 on Friday night.

On a related note, the Panthers had to halt ticket sales — to anyone, from anywhere — for Game 6 against the Maple Leafs.

It was scheduled for Sunday in Sunrise.

FLORIDA PANTHERS ON DECK

STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

PANTHERS (WC2) AT CAROLINA HURRICANES (MET1)

GAME 1

• When: TBA
• Where: PNC Arena, Raleigh
• TV/Radio: TBA
  
• Series Schedule: TBA
• Season Series: (Carolina won 2-1): Florida 3, Carolina 2 (Nov.9); Carolina 4, Florida 0 (Dec. 30); Carolina 6, Florida 4 (April 13)
• All-Time Regular Season Series: Carolina/Hartford leads 71-46-10, 11 ties
• Postseason History: First Meeting
• How They Got Here — Carolina: d. New York Islanders in 6; d. New Jersey Devils in 5. Florida: d. Boston Bruins in 7; d. Toronto Maple Leafs in 5.