Spectators sat as far away as sections 321 and 335 in the upper deck of the Carrier Dome to be a part of the U.S. indoor professional hockey record crowd of 30,715 on Saturday night.

They got a view that seemed closer to watching a game on a building outside Wrigley Field than inside the Crunch’s usual confines of the Onondaga War Memorial. They were also part of a three-pack of hockey that came with a charity game, Utica College against Oswego State and the main Crunch-Comets event.

Tyler Tichener, a 21-year-old senior at Oswego State sitting in the upper reaches of 321, received tickets for the game from his parents and said he didn’t have designs on sticking around after his school played Utica College in the afternoon.

“We thought it would be a fun game, but we also thought we’d be able to see most of it,” he said. “I wouldn’t even mind even being at the railing up here, but it’s just so far and so high.”

“If we had decent tickets we’d probably be here from the first game to the third game,” he said.

The Oswego State-Utica game did set a Division III attendance record, though, with 7,047 in attendance.

Across the football field, Rachael Kellogg, 29, said she was sticking around through the Crunch–Comets main event, but she and six others had no choice but to take the tickets furthest away from the ice.

“We just got tickets today,” she said, sitting with her son. “This was the best we had for the price we were willing to pay anyway. We had been talking about it for a while and at the spur of the moment decided to come.”

Tickets in the upper deck started at $15 on Ticketmaster, while the most expensive were $61 after fees.

Mike Angelidis, who has attended Syracuse basketball games at the Dome before, said he was amazed by people sitting in the far end with a better view of Hall of Fame exhibits set up in the extra space than the ice, which sat where the Syracuse basketball court normally is.

“That’s true loyalty to the team and how much buzz they made about both this game,” he said.

Crunch owner Howard Dolgon reasserted that he has no plans to play another hockey game at the Dome again. He called it “one and done” and said the crowd wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

“If someone had done this before us, we would not have done it,” he said. “There was a uniqueness to the event and I think when it is unique it does have a cache and an appeal.”

Immediately after the game, workers took to the ice with sledgehammers to break apart days-old creation to prepare the area for the schedule Syracuse men’s basketball team practice on Monday. It could be the first and last time such a transformation occurs.

Said Dolgon: “I don’t want to say we took advantage of it, but we leveraged that.”

Published on November 23, 2014 at 7:36 am