Vancouver Canucks Break Kids' Hearts Over Ticket Giveaway Confusion

Canucks fans It’s a lesson everyone has to learn early in life — your favorite sports team will always break your heart.

In this case, the team in question is the Vancouver Canucks, and the ones learning the lesson are thousands of young hockey fans across Canada. The players from more than 300 minor-league hockey teams are battling disappointment after being told they had won tickets to the Heritage Classic, only to be later informed that they actually hadn’t, according to Yahoo! Sports.

The disappointment came after a computing error. The Canucks sent an e-mail to 1100 minor-league teams informing them of a chance to win tickets to Sunday’s game at B.C. Place, and about 300 teams replied to the email to enter the contest. Instead of receiving an e-mail response from the Canucks thanking each team for entering the contest, all the teams that entered received an e-mail saying they had won the tickets.

When the Canucks figured out they had made an error, the team back-pedaled, but by then that meant that parents and coaches had to tell a bunch of 8-year-olds that they didn’t actually have tickets to the game.

“[The players] were really happy to go and excited and jumping up and down. And then I had to tell them that, ‘Hey, we’re not going now. They took the tickets away,'” father and Abbotsford coach Anthony Bucci said.

“They’re eight years old, future hockey players, and they look up to the Canucks. Now they don’t get to go and participate in probably what’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime game.”

Canucks spokesman Chris Brumwell didn’t have much of an answer for the disappointed kids other than that it was all just an unfortunate mistake.

“It didn’t roll out properly,” Brumwell said. “We are trying to put our heads together, and we’ll hopefully be able to get back to those teams that didn’t win tickets [with] some good news about something that will get the kids excited again.”