Brave Chicago-based Lightning fan tweets from Blackhawks country, scores Stanley Cup Final owner's box seats

By Sun-Times staff

Screen_Shot_2015_06_15_at_1.50.29_PM.png — Brittany Wahl’s tweet about wearing a Lightning jersey to work in Chicago got her invited into the Lightning owner’s box for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals | (twitter)

They may have banned Blackhawks jerseys in Tampa’s Amalie Arena, but Brittany Wahl’s coworkers in Chicago aren’t so uptight.

The 27-year-old Tampa Bay Lightning fan has been wearing her Lightning jersey to work in Chicago — and when she tweeted about it last week, she ended up being invited to watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final in the Lightning owner’s suite with her parents, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Wahl, who grew up in Florida but now works at a telecommunications company in Chicago, tweeted #imeitherbraveorstupid about her workplace outfit. She had already planned to attend Game 5 but got bumped up to the owner’s box after Visit St. Pete/Clearwater execs noticed her tweet and invited her, the paper reported:

After a brief back-and-forth, and after Wahls tweeted that she was flying to Tampa for Game 5, the tourism agency replied: We’d love to Amp your trip back home with a ticket to the owners suite with our Exec. Dir. for tomorrow’s game!! Up for that? Her reply? !!!!!! YES!!!!!! … In the suite Saturday, Wahls chose an open seat and listened to some men next to her chatter away in Russian. One of them, she said, looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Then she saw the ring. I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone, but you were on the Cup team, right?’ she said. And he kind of laughed and said, ‘Yes.’ It was Dmitry Afanasenkov, part of the team that led the Lightning to their last Stanley Cup championship in 2004. Between mingling with celebrities and getting to see her favorite team up close, she said, we had a great time.

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