I’m going to get right to the point here. Hockey has a problem and it’s a personality problem. I don’t mean that in the sense of players, personnel, or teams. Some of them have big personalities. John Tortorella thrives on his personality being out there. Brad Marchand has an on-ice personality that comes through in every game. Many of the commentators have distinct personalities that make the broadcasts for various teams different. Where the league really lacks personality is in the arenas.
Think about some of the other sports out there. In a sport like Formula 1, you have a season filled with uniquely laid out tracks. Every time you see a Grand Prix, the cars traverse through different turns and terrain. It makes an event out of going to each location. The same could be said for golf. No two golf courses are the same. The distance from tee to hole will be different. The weather could be different. The curvature, elevation, and hazards within a hole will be different. It makes each Open feel unique. Now, these are sports where nobody really has a home advantage. At least, not a frequent one.
Let’s go to a sport where teams have a home field advantage on a regular basis: Major League Baseball. Each team plays half their games at their home park while they play the other half at their opponents’ parks. With the season being 162 games, that means that there should be 81 games at each park each season. As a viewer, you would probably want each park to feel a little different. You wouldn’t want to see 162 games that felt like they were happening in the same place. You would also want the 81 games at your favourite team’s park to feel different than the games in other parks because it would make your team feel that much more special. And, for many teams, that’s the case.
My mind first goes to Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. There are a few features to that ballpark that give it a unique feel, the most notable being The Green Monster. I don’t even watch baseball beyond what I see in passing, and I know about The Green Monster. It’s a giant wall in left field that has been there since the original ballpark was constructed in 1912. They never got rid of it, even as the rest of the park was renovated. There have been modifications to it, mostly in protective material added to its exterior and the green paint that gave it its name, but it has been there as long as the ballpark itself. It gives the Boston homefield a unique feel.
The same could be said, to a lesser extent, about The Great American Ballpark. Now, this one isn’t quite as obvious as The Green Monster. This isn’t a feature in the park that makes it feel unique. The park is situated in Cincinnati and is the home of the Cincinnati Reds. Right outside the park is a highway, and right on the other side of the highway is the Ohio River. This puts The Great American Ballpark on the border of Ohio and Kentucky. This means that, theoretically, if someone were to hit the ball hard enough, they could hit it into another state. And that theory has come true, one time, when Adam Dunn hit a home run that left the park, crossed the highway, and bounced down the riverbank onto some driftwood. His ball was in Kentucky. If a chance, however slim, to see that happen again is a part of the park, that makes the park unique.
Many other ballparks also feature unique qualities. The Blue Jays play in the Rogers Centre, known for having the first retractable roof in a baseball stadium and for the hotel within the stadium. Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, has thinner and drier air, which affects the density of the baseballs, making them easier to hit farther. The Mets have a giant apple and the Astros have a train. The Cubs have ivy lining their walls. San Francisco is another interesting one. They have a bay right outside their stadium. People will get in their boats and sit in the bay hoping to catch a home run ball that flies out there.
Those aren’t even all the unique features in ballparks. That’s only a handful. But, as you can see, each one of those features gives each ballpark a personality. The Blue Jays games at Rogers Centre, formerly SkyDome, wouldn’t feel quite the same without the retractable roof and the chance sighting of someone having sex in their hotel room during a game. The Mets games wouldn’t have the same personality if the apple didn’t come up after a home run. These things are part of the teams’ personalities. The ballparks are extensions of the teams’ personalities.
The NHL doesn’t work like that. Yes, I’m finally bringing things around to the NHL, the place where I wanted to start this whole thing. NHL arenas don’t feel unique to outsiders watching on television. Sure, when you go to the arena, there might be differences in the food and the eateries, in the hallways, and in the memorial areas (each team has a different history of success). But when you watch a game on television, it doesn’t really matter what arena the game is in. Aside from the stanchions possibly being a different colour, the advertisements being different, or the number of seats being different by maybe a thousand, the arenas all feel the same.
Think about it. What’s the difference between the Ottawa Senators’ arena and the Florida Panthers’ arena? Not much. They’re relatively close in size. Things look the same, outside of some paint and logos. There’s not a whole lot that would make one arena feel different from another arena. With 82 games a season, 41 of them at your home arena, you should want your home arena to feel different.
In the past, the NHL had a few standout arenas. Madison Square Garden is still kicking around as the home of the New York Rangers. The current venue is the fourth to share the name. It opened in 1964 and I don’t see it changing as the Rangers’ home arena any time soon. Much of the personality that comes from Madison Square Garden is just the history of the place. It’s a central hub of New York entertainment and, as such, has managed to create a legendary status that few other arenas can compete with.
Another standout for unique arenas were The Hartford Whalers. They were a team from the WHA, a league that competed with the NHL in the 1960s, that was absorbed into the NHL during a merger. While in Hartford, they played at the Hartford Civic Center, which was attached to a mall. Many people dubbed their arena “The Mall” because it was essentially an extension of the mall. The shots of the exterior that played around commercial times showed that. Just the fact that the team played in a mall was enough to make things feel unique. You were going into a different world when watching a Hartford Whalers game. The mall and their Brass Bonanza theme would do that to you.
But here’s the main issue, most of the arenas that had personality, which came from history, have been replaced. Civic Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins until 2010, had a retractable roof. That’s a rarity for hockey. Maple Leaf Gardens, Joe Louis Arena, and the Montreal Forum were some of the most storied arenas in hockey history and have all been replaced. None of the new arenas have the personality that the older ones had, and they all kind of feel samey when watching on television.
Only a handful of current arenas stand out. Climate Pledge Arena, home of the Seattle Kraken, stands out for two main reasons. For one, the rink itself is below ground level. Instead of going up from ground level to higher seats in the arena, you have to go down from ground level to get to the lower seats. There are also two score boards, one over each team’s end instead of one above center ice. Those two details help make Climate Pledge Arena look and feel a little different than most of the arenas around the NHL.
The other team that really stands out, and the one that pushed me into this feeling that the NHL needs more personality in its arenas, is Mullett Arena. This is, for now, the home arena of the Arizona Coyotes. It is also the home arena of the Arizona State Sun Devils. Mullett Arena is located on a university campus as part of Arizona State. The Arizona Coyotes are playing in a college arena. At face value, this might seem like a knock against the Arizona Coyotes. They couldn’t get their own arena and had to resort to a non-professional venue. The thing is, that may have worked in their favour. It may have given them the personality they needed beyond “Boy, this is one of the worst teams in the league.” The university arena has a much smaller capacity than an NHL arena. This means that the density of fans will be much greater, though the total number might not be. Having the fans packing a smaller venue raises the energy from the stands. Having fewer seats makes the game look more intimate. Everything about a game at Mullett Arena feels different than a game at any other arena. That’s what I think every team should strive for.
Okay, let me clarify. I don’t think every NHL team should strive to play in a college arena. Not at all. If every team did that, we would run into the same problem where twenty-five to thirty teams have arenas that feel more or less the same. I think every team should strive to make their arena stand out in some way. There should be something that makes that home arena feel different than every other home arena, outside of the team that plays there and their fans. I’m sure the energy in Nashville is great, but that’s the energy of fans who will make up a chant on the spot to insult another team. That’s not the arena, itself. Going from arena to arena is like going from house to house in a new subdivision. They all look and feel the same, aside from the people inside.
One other thing that should be noted is something that has come into effect in the past couple seasons of NHL broadcasts. I’m going to have to both sides this part in order to say that I understand why it happens, but also show why I believe it takes away one crucial piece of personality that most arenas have when you’re there in person. Over the past couple seasons, the advertisements on the boards have been replaced for television broadcasts with digital advertisements. The main reason, which is understandable, is to give more advertising space to local broadcast markets. Say an Edmonton fan is watching an Edmonton feed of an Edmonton game, but the Oilers were playing in Dallas. Those Dallas advertisements would be almost guaranteed irrelevant to the Edmonton fan. The digital replacement of the advertisements allow the Edmonton feed to superimpose advertisements relevant to Edmonton viewers onto the boards and the ice. Better bang for the advertisers’ buck.
My issue is that this erases any locally unique advertising from the arena. All the ads at all the arenas become the same ads, game in and game out. That same Edmonton fan, watching a five-game road trip that takes their team to five different arenas, will see the same advertisements every single time. The variety is gone at that point. I get that the NHL can earn more money doing things this way, but it takes something out of the personality. When I watch a game played in Toronto, I want to see Mr. Sub and Pizza Nova ads on the boards. Or things like that. I don’t know what other local or Canadian brands might be there. When I went to a Buffalo Sabres game, I was delighted to see the Zambonis decked out in ads for Cellino Plumbing. That’s the kind of local ad branding that makes a home arena feel like a home arena. The digital boards take away from that, thus leading to some extra lack of personality.
The NHL’s personality problem comes not through the broadcasts, the players, the fans, or the management. It comes from the home arenas that don’t quite feel like home. You can have all the family (team) photos and trophies you want, but it won’t truly feel like your home until there’s some random item or feature that makes it yours. Something where you can say “No other team has this. This is part of our identity.” And, I guess that’s just it. Without these home arena features, it feels like a team might not have an identity. That leaves the NHL feeling like there’s a lack of personality. It’s a problem that I hope gets fixed soon.
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