Teen Gets Over 9,000 Retweets To Earn Devils Season Tickets

MARLBORO, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Hockey fans know season tickets for an NHL team can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

But one local hockey lover earned them in just a few hours of his time.

Nick Donnelly is a man of action. He loves hockey and his beloved New Jersey Devils.

"Also my initials are NJD, New Jersey Devils. It just clicks," he told CBS2's Steve Overmyer.

The 16-year-old tweeted a simple call to action to the Devils; how many retweets would earn him season tickets? To his surprise, the Devils responded with a number of more than 9,000 -- challenge accepted.

The tweet caught fire and the teenager watched the retweets takeoff.

"Once I got to 2,000 I thought it was going to slow down, but then you think it could become possible," he said.

Within just 6 hours he hit his mark, and earned season tickets from the Devils, and a chance to watch his heroes in person.

"It's so much wilder, so much faster, and a lot more fast-paced, and to give you, because there's no scale to how fast everything is," he said.

In the past 24 hours, the Marlboro High School Jr watched his Twitter account triple in size, and he's even making new friends at school, all from one tweet.

"It's been pretty cool because you go from just being someone that nobody really knows about, you know you're just living life, and then send it one tweet, and all the sudden everyone knows about you," he said.

The life of this Devils fan was changed because he wasn't afraid to take a chance.

"As Wayne Gretzky once said, 'you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take," he said.

Nick took his shot and scored.

This was a one-time challenge the Devils agreed to honor. Nick has been told he must do his homework or he won't be able to go to any games.