Fans found plenty to love Saturday night at the city of Kent\u2019s ShoWare Center, the new home of the Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team.<\/p>\n
The Thunderbirds beat the Everett Silvertips 4-3 in front of a sold-out crowd of 6,125 at the inaugural game at the ShoWare Center. Fans soaked in the atmosphere of the $84.5 million events center before the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeattle ought to be embarrassed,\u201d said Kyle Stephenson, who drove up from Belfair to meet his son from Seattle for the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can put these arenas in Kent and Everett and Seattle can\u2019t build a new one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Wheeldon and Taffi Necker, of Tacoma, plan to buy season tickets next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis place is awesome,\u201d Wheeldon said. \u201cIt feels like it was purpose-built for hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Necker found the new arena similar to a new car or new house.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt smells really clean,\u201d Necker said. \u201cI like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle and Mike Stephenson ate at The Ram restaurant at Kent Station before the game. They waited two hours to get a table as hockey fans packed the restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will pump a lot of money into the economy,\u201d Kyle Stephenson said.<\/p>\n
Derek and Linda Gulbransen, of Puyallup, bought season tickets this year for the first time because the T-birds moved to Kent from Seattle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was too far to drive,\u201d Linda Gulbransen said.<\/p>\n
The couple occasionally attended games at KeyArena, but prefer the ShoWare Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a lot more comfortable,\u201d said Linda Gulbranse n as she settled into her seat behind the team benches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a lot more intimate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gulbransens parked at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center because the arena lot filled up.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we actually were closer to the entrance,\u201d Linda Gulbransen said. \u201cWe just had to walk across the street.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fans enjoyed the free parking at the events center and the Regional Justice Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this day and age that\u2019s unheard of,\u201d said Kyle Stephenson, used to paying for parking for sporting events in Seattle.<\/p>\n
Mike Stephenson lives in Queen Anne near KeyArena, the former home of the Thunderbirds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll gladly drive down here because KeyArena sucks,\u201d said Mike Stephenson, who has had season tickets for three years. \u201cThis is very nice. It\u2019s a lot better than KeyArena.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fans found plenty to love Saturday night at the city of Kent\u2019s ShoWare Center, the new home of the Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team. The Thunderbirds beat the Everett Silvertips 4-3 in front of a sold-out crowd of 6,125 at the inaugural game at the ShoWare Center. Fans soaked in the atmosphere of the $84.5 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":13295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13294"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}