On Saturday night when they host the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins will sell out their 100th straight game.

“Sellout,” as New England sports fans have come to learn, is a relative term. A very relative term.

It’s relative because they’re told that, even when sections of Fenway Park sit half-empty, the stadium is sold out. And it’s relative because the Celtics and the Patriots also have multi-season sellout streaks going.

Yet, at so many of the games, it’s almost as easy to find an empty seat as it is to find an $8 Bud Light.

So how are these games sellouts?

John Higs, Owner of Higs Tickets, says that it’s simple, and the teams get away with their claims mostly because they’re right: the rules of the game are such that as long as there are as many tickets sold as seats in the arena, it’s a sellout. That, conveniently, doesn’t factor in standing room tickets or club seats.

So while Fenway Park’s capacity is technically 37,493, it can actually hold many more fans, even if only 32,000 of them are seated in the stands. And while half of section 308 sits empty for an afternoon Bruins game against Colorado on Columbus Day, as long as there are still 17,565 ticketed fans somewhere in the building, it’s a sellout. Same goes for Gillette Stadium and the Patriots, who could care less whether you’re hanging out near the pro shop or watching the game at CBS scene; if you paid for a ticket, you count towards their 68,756 needed for a sellout. And yes, if you’re one of the 6,000-plus sitting in the club seats that don’t count towards total stadium capacity, you count, too.

Of course, the Pats probably actually sell out their games – after all, they only play eight of them at home each year, which is a far cry from the 81 that Fenway sees. Whether or not they’ll continue to do so after fans have the option of gambling away their afternoon instead of taking in a game remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, the sellout is a pretty meaningless statistic – crowds affect how teams play, but whether it’s a hundred more or a thousand less than capacity rarely affects the play of the game, and when the crowd presence is so important (during the playoffs), they usually show up.

But isn’t it a bit amateurish for teams to claim sellouts when, in fact, they’re not filling all their seats? Technically, no. Technically, if they sell as many tickets as there are seats in the arena, the game is sold out. They can make that statement without much of anyone arguing it.

But if it’s not amateurish, it sure is juvenile, like declaring yourself homecoming queen before the votes are in. And if it’s juvenile, it’s hard to find an adjective for the celebrations that the Red Sox hold each time they reach a new faux sellout milestone.

As for the Bruins, apart from a poster and acknowledging the milestone on the TD Garden video boards,  they don’t have any fanfare planned for Saturday night, but it’s certain that the 17,565 that might actually make it to watch two Original Six rivals go at it would be happy with a win. Nothing more, nothing less.