The best night out in the Inland Empire costs less than parking at a Kings game, and you do not have to sit in freeway traffic to reach it. Nobody outside the IE seems to have noticed yet.
Opening night is the season at its most hopeful: the lights, the anthem, the first hit that rattles the glass and reminds the whole building what it came for. The roster is stocked with the players the Kings are developing, which means the kid you watch tonight might be scoring in a different sweater by spring, in front of a crowd that never saw him do it here first.
Toyota Arena in early October, families and diehards in the same rows, seats near the ice available to anyone who wants them.
Take the kids. Then take credit forever for knowing his name before anybody else did.