You might just need to leave an hour earlier
Actually traffic should not be that bad when getting there, I felt the traffic is really bad leaving the scotiabank place.
You do not need to go on 417, just drive on local road. Also you might wanna park outside scotiabank place- save 10 bucks, more importantly do not need to spend 20-40 mins in the parking lot waiting to go out. If you go onto palladium drive, you will get to a road called "silver seven". Immediately passing silver seven road, on your right side, there are lots of parking, park there and walk about 10 mins to scotiabank place.
There are food/beer sold in scotiabank place which is not cheap. There is no restaurant in walking distance less than 30 mins. Also for shopping, there are bunch of car dealerships in short walking distance. Costco is also not too far from scotiabank place.
There is pre-game warmup about 1 hour before the real game. It is also interesting to watch if first time watching the game.
Actually it is quite different from watching at home, I personally prefer watching from home, but sometimes only to take kids enjoying the feeling of watching in the scotiabank place. Enjoy the game.