The beer alone could bankrupt a person. But it’s the tickets that will really do you in at an average price of $370 a pop — according to Forbes magazine, the most expensive in the NHL. Yes, I’m talking about watching the Toronto Maple Leafs play hockey at the Air Canada Centre, an experience reserved these days for the very rich or the very lucky.

I’m a member of the latter camp having been to three games on the dime of generous dads: fathers of my childhood friends who are businessmen with occasional access to their companies’ treasure trove of season’s tickets.

Chances are if you’ve been to a Leafs game recently you too were the beneficiary of a benevolent businessman or you are a businessman yourself. A joint investigation between the Toronto Star and the CBC revealed this week what many Leafs fans have suspected for years. There aren’t merely “a lot” of men in suits sitting in the stands of the ACC during Leafs games, scrolling through their phones and taking bathroom breaks at wildly inappropriate times. There are masses of them. According to the Star’s investigative reporter Marco Chown Oved, “Like many stadiums, the majority of the seats in the ACC are held by season ticket holders. For the Leafs, that number is 90 per cent, according to team owner MLSE. Additional tickets are held back for players’ families and staff.”

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But what really irks, in light of Toronto’s imminent playoff journey is this: remarkably, writes Chown Oven, “Only 96 seats for the first Maple Leafs home playoff game were ever put on sale to the general public through the box office.” Ninety-six tickets that average 500 bucks each. Who the hell can swing that? It appears that in order to be a Leafs fan who attends hockey games on your own dime and your own time, you have to commit yourself to the hockey franchise with the same unchecked zeal and extravagance exhibited by Raptors Superfan Nav Bhatia.

This reality wouldn’t be so maddening if the atmosphere at Leafs games was boisterous and joyful, like say, the atmosphere at Toronto Raptors games (which though still expensive aren’t out of this world expensive). But it isn’t boisterous and joyful. It’s quiet — sometimes eerily so.

This is in large part because the guys who do attend nearly every game — the suits and their brethren in the 100s — don’t even pretend to be excited by the fact that they are sitting a stone’s throw from Frederik Andersen. They look bored.

I know this because I’ve sat among them. A few months ago, for the first time in my life, (thanks of course, to a benevolent businessman) I sat directly behind the net at the ACC. My seatmate and I were not only some of the only people in our section wearing Leafs sweaters — we were some of the only people watching the game. The woman sitting in front of us mostly checked her Facebook. The guys behind us analyzed NHL stats in hushed tones like they were at a golf match. The preteen across the aisle yawned. When the third period rolled around and we were down two goals with several minutes to go, dozens of people in our esteemed section began leaving as though the game was already over. Having sat in the nosebleeds before, where a red-faced drunkard in a Wendel Clark jersey belted out Céline Dion between periods, I was reminded of the movie Titanic, and it suddenly dawned on me: I was in first class. The real party’s in steerage.

But it shouldn’t be. It should be everywhere in that stadium — behind the net and in every snooty box. If you are a businessman or the client of one for whom watching hockey at the ACC is as routine and accessible as a car wash, lend your seats to somebody who will genuinely appreciate them. And if you do attend a playoff game this post-season, show some respect for us plebs watching at home on TV, and for God sakes — look alive.

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