My valentines gift for Patrick was tickets to the Social Suite at the Lightning Game last night. The Lightning Social Media team opened a suite for all of their dedicated twitter followers for a tweet-up at the game. The Boyfriend is a huge hockey fan and it sounded like it would be a fun event.

We got to the suite early enough to see the teams practice before the game.

We also got some snacks from the fully stocked F&B in the suite. I actually found some vegan options. The raw squash was a nice surprise!

Being a tweet-up, guests were encouraged to tweet throughout the evening using Hashtag “#TBLSocialSuite”.

There were give-aways and contests throughout the night. During the first period they ran a contest and asked us to tweet a picture in our #BeTheThunder shirts. They would select one follower to spend the second period in the press box with Dave Mishkin, Phil Esposito and Matt Sammon.

Patrick tweeted this…

Then this after meeting team owner Jeff Vinik…

Then @TBLightning tweeted this…

And that’s how we ended up here…

There is nothing quite like being in the Radio Booth during a goal!

After a quick trip to the Lightning Executives suite for a jersey exchange with a IndyCar driver E.J. Viso and the Lightning’s Marc-Andre Bergeron…

…we returned to the Party Suite just in time to watch the Lightning’s winning goal during overtime!

What a night! Great job by the Lightning Social Media team for putting together such a memorable event. It’s incredible to see how Social Media has changed real world social events. Anyone in Tampa, be sure to check out the next Social Suite Night. I think I heard there would be another one on March 31st.

Follow the new In Love and Peanut Butter twitter account at @LOVEnPB