My twenty-minute long dream of bringing a miniature hockey net into the stands for every Alex Elder point shot that goes wide and out has come to a devastating end.

The Vancouver Canucks revealed a new security plan for the 2015/16 season, which includes airport-style metal detectors at the doors.

The details to this are pretty straight forward, and are all available on the Canucks website. Basically, handheld electronics can be held above your head and the detector will point out that the metal is coming from there, but anything beyond that will lead to a secondary screening. Anybody with bags will have them checked.

Items that are prohibited will be confiscated and cannot be checked in for safe keeping (basically: weapons, laser pointers, alcohol, animals, and most importantly, selfie sticks). These items will be “disposed of in a responsible manner”, so don’t try to walk your dog through the detector. 

Detectors have been used in the past by the Canucks; wands were brought in as an introductory effort last season, and required by the league during the 2011 Stanley Cup Final.

The National Hockey League is instituting a league-wide security policy, and the Canucks are simply following it. All thirty arenas will be responsible for following a specific safety protocol, which includes having metal detection at the gate. 

Some teams are taking the new policies to a further extreme than others. Detroit, for example, are adding a ridiculous “clear bag” policy that makes Vancouver International Airport look lenient. The Canucks, understanding that a lot of security is theatrical and that the population is usually not to be feared, appear to be sticking with the basics.

No, in the sense that the Canucks are doing better than many cities by keeping their efforts simple, and if you don’t want to subject yourself to a metal detector for any reason (medical, conspiratorial, religious, whatever), you can head to a wheelchair-accessible gate and get a pat down instead. 

At the same time, you might want to start heading to games a little bit earlier. I don’t have any significant experience with this level of security at an NHL rink, but Toronto’s Rogers Centre (home of the Blue Jays) added full-scale metal detectors this year, and while they appear to do their job, it was taking ane extra ten minutes to get into the ballpark before the bandwagon built up.

We have no word yet as to whether the Canucks are going to do anything to protect us from Luca Sbisa, or if they have plans to remove any of the clocks in the facility.