NHL
NHL Regular
Season
Come to a Kraken game and you might catch a (replica) fish from Berkly Catton. Olivia Vanni / Getty Images
This article is part of our NHL Arena Rankings series, in which we rank all 32 current rinks and present stories about memorable rinks of the past and present.
There are reasons not to bother attending NHL games.
This is not breaking news. A big reason our arena rankings exist is to give fans a space to vent about elements of the experience that bother them — and vent you did.
Advertisement
The cost of getting in the building is, largely, obscene. Food prices aren’t far off. Parking can stink, and transit can stink, and the music choices can stink. Maybe worst of all, some of the buildings feel as if they came off an assembly line. (Was there a more devastating burn in the rankings than the one comparing Pittsburgh’s arena to a Home Depot? No. No, there was not.)
Despite the best efforts of bad actors, though, watching hockey in the company of 20,000 of your closest friends can still feel unbeatable — and parts of the in-arena experience are unmatched.
That brings us to our list — which is closer in line with an awards show, except one based on some guy’s very unscientific opinion. If your own personal favorite went unmentioned, all apologies.
Usually, the cannon goes boom only after a Columbus Blue Jackets goal. But by the end of the 2015 All-Star Game in Nationwide Arena, when we heard that monstrosity go off 12 times after goals, some version of Stockholm Syndrome had set in for me in the press box.
Did I enjoy what I was being subjected to? No. Did I understand it, in some way? Absolutely. The best traditions should annoy outsiders. They should make you ask, “How is this allowed, and who is responsible for it?” They should have enough of a connection to the team’s overall aesthetic that they wouldn’t work as well anywhere else. And, even so, they should make you a little jealous that your team didn’t think of it first. The cannon checks all those boxes. I hate it.
Honorable mention: The Tesla coils in Tampa
I was lucky enough to experience the singing at a Canadiens game last spring, when fans at the Bell Centre experienced their first postseason games since 2017. Often imitated, never duplicated.
Advertisement
More generally, hockey writers love Montreal for a variety of reasons — some cliché, some not — and I figured out last season that I was immune to none of them. Example A: I kept a decibel-measuring app running on my phone during games. Every arena experience, ultimately, is unique; none is unique in more ways than the Canadiens’.
This is the newest tradition on the list. When a Kraken player is named the first star of the game, he chucks a replica salmon into the crowd. It’s got local roots, thanks to fishmongers at Pike Place Market, and it’s a fresh take on the more standard practice of throwing T-shirts or game-used sticks into the crowd.
Honorable mention: the Hurricanes’ “Storm Surge”
Fans standing and cheering the U.S. national anthem started during the 1985 playoffs at Chicago Stadium, continued through some putrid Blackhawks years at United Center and remains a mainstay during the Connor Bedard era. That longevity is enough to make it stand out in a league in which plenty of fan bases try to put their own spins on the anthem-singing process.
Honorable mention: Winnipeg fans shouting “True North”
Every team, in one way or another, has a goal song. Very few have a goal song written specifically for them. Only one has a goal song written specifically for them by Pantera. “Puck Off” has been part of Stars game since 1999, and it is perfect in every way.
I love the city of Detroit, I love the octopus toss, and I pray for its eventual return to the NHL landscape. This isn’t a history class, though. “There Will Be Blood” is not eligible for the 2026 Academy Awards. Until the Red Wings make the playoffs and fans start smuggling dead cephalopods into Little Caesars Arena, the rats are king.
Advertisement
No modern list of the coolest in-arena experiences would be complete without including something about the pregame scene at T-Mobile Arena. Everybody has a gigantic video board, on-ice projections and ridiculous light shows, but nobody puts them together quite like the Golden Knights. This is another one that made me roll eyes until I actually experienced it.
Since 1990, Ron Baechle has counted out goals, exhorted the rest of the crowd to do the same and chucked rally towels from his seat, currently on the 300 level of Enterprise Arena. This one is as grassroots as it gets; Baechle picked up the idea from an AHL game in Peoria, Ill., and brought it to St. Louis.
It took years, but folks started joining in — and in the decades since, Baechle has become a local celebrity, starring in commercials and legitimately becoming one of the faces of the Blues’ fan base. Not the organization at large, though; he says he pays for his own tickets.
Every arena shows pump-up videos. Many of them consist of stitched-together clips from movies and TV shows — and while the Washington Capitals weren’t the first team to incorporate a Tom Green bit from the movie “Road Trip,” they certainly leaned in the hardest. It turned into a capital-T “Thing” during the 2008 postseason, and Green — the MTV legend himself — re-recorded the scene while wearing a Caps jersey.
It’d be weird not to mention the Wild in some capacity. Grand Casino Arena was firmly in the top 10 of our overall rankings for a reason, and there’s plenty to like about the vibes in St. Paul. We’re making special note of their puck-drop tradition. Lots of arenas do something similar, but there’s something particularly wholesome about shouting “Let’s Play Hockey” in the State of Hockey™.
Honorable mention: The storm siren at Hurricanes games
The NHL Arena Rankings series is part of a partnership with StubHub. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
Sean Gentille is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the NHL. He previously covered Pittsburgh sports with the The Athletic and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the NHL for Sporting News, and he’s a graduate of the University of Maryland. Follow Sean on Twitter @seangentille
Hockey News