NHL Playoff Tickets: Higher Seeds Leading To Higher Prices

The Stanley Cup playoffs are well underway, so we at TiqIQ wanted to take the temperature of the country and see which team's tickets are the hottest. To get a better view of things we put together this ticket price heat index graphic (buy tickets here).

As you can see in the graphic below, the dark red, or hottest regions, are found in New York, Vancouver and Pittsburgh. Rangers fans are paying $361 to see the top-seeded Eastern Conference team take on the Senators, while the top seed in the West, the Canucks, are getting an average of $287 per seat for their so far very disappointing first-round series against the Kings. In Pittsburgh, the fans are forking over $266 to watch their interstate rivalry series with the Flyers. So far the high price of these tickets hasn't guaranteed a happy day at the rink, as both the Canucks and Penguins dropped their first two games at home, and the Rangers were only able to head to Ottawa with a split.

Unlike those three powerhouses, fans in Los Angeles have gotten the biggest bang for their buck. Kings fans -- treated to a surprising Game 3 win over the Canucks Sunday night to move within one game of knocking off the President's Trophy winners -- are only paying an average of $199 to watch their Kings take the ice at Staples Center. The Kings share the red zone with Washington and Chicago, where the home crowds await pivotal game 3s as both series change venues with the two teams splitting the first two games.

On the bottom end of the spectrum, in the yellow zone, are the Panthers, Devils and Red Wings, with tickets for all three teams' home games selling for under $125.