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Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

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  • #16
    Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

    Walk in off the sidewalk in a nondescript part of town and there it is, Matthews Arena, a most improbable classic from another world (1910) . . . “the world’s oldest ice hockey arena.”

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    • #17
      Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

      LaBahn LOOKS incredibly cheap. And I've never even been there.
      Grant Salzano, Boston College '10
      Writer Emeritus, BC Interruption
      Twitter: @Salzano14


      Click here for the BC Interruption Pairwise, KRACH, and GRaNT Calculators

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      • #18
        Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

        Originally posted by TonyTheTiger20 View Post
        LaBahn LOOKS incredibly cheap. And I've never even been there.
        I'll defend LaBahn as my home rink, although what I really love about it is the crowd. Nearly every game has some great fan energy. We have already had some sold out games this year. The seats are not too shallow for me, although I am rather small. I'll finally get to a game at Ridder this season for some comparison. Every Ridder game I have watched online looks pretty empty - even the WCHA championship. For a top-performing team, I'm surprised MN hasn't done more to build-up the fan base.

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        • #19
          Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

          Originally posted by TonyTheTiger20 View Post
          LaBahn LOOKS incredibly cheap. And I've never even been there.
          LaBahn looks like an arena where the budget was slashed midway through the process, so the buyer went back to the architect and just had him remove features until the price was right, w/o really redoing the plan. I agree that the crowd support is very good, but that just exacerbates the problem with the squished seating. The lighting during the day is pretty neat -- that must be the one big-buck item they elected to keep -- but most of the rest of it leaves you wondering what it would have looked like had somebody not opted for the cheap route. The advantages that Ridder has over LaBahn is that you can fit another ~ 1K people in there if you have to and the support upstairs to handle bigger events. The LaBahn press box is insufficient and there isn't anywhere to which one can overflow.

          Ridder should get dinged for expensive parking and concourse bottlenecks at concessions when the place is full.
          "... And lose, and start again at your beginnings
          And never breathe a word about your loss;" -- Rudyard Kipling

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          • #20
            Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

            [QUOTE=Genbeau;6551715]
            Originally posted by Rockytop View Post

            Looks like the bad guys (girls) just scored too.

            Yes, and the Bobcats went on to win the game.

            Also, not a single Yale player in view, Photo of the QU bench and presumably the visitor's stands.

            Of course, Yale got the last laugh by beating QU in the National Championship game a few months later.

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            • #21
              Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

              Originally posted by ARM View Post
              Ridder should get dinged for expensive parking and concourse bottlenecks at concessions when the place is full.
              And the concessions themselves...
              Minnesota Golden Gopher Hockey

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              • #22
                Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                Originally posted by FireKnight View Post
                My Favorites (having seen men's and women's games in each except 1):Worst:
                1. Union (Achilles) - an embarrassment to college hockey
                2. RPI (HFH) - dump of all dumps, even with the new lipstick they put on the pig.
                3. Princeton (Hobey Baker) - tons of history ruined by an upgrade a few decades ago that made the place look worse
                4. BU (Walter Brown) - haven't been there in a few years, but when I was, it looked like they forgot it existed when they built Agganis.
                Seriously what new lipstick did they put on HFH?

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                • #23
                  Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                  What I could not get about Amsoil is for such a new arena how could they have obstructed view seating?

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                  • #24
                    Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                    Originally posted by Eeyore View Post

                    5. LaBahn Arena - It's a great place to watch a game, except that the seats are so god****ed uncomfortable. They cheaped out building the place, and one of the ways they did so was making the benches too shallow.
                    I don't think the shallowness of the benches is a function of 'cheap' as much as the small space they shoe-horned the building into; to have anything close to a reasonable seating capacity, they had to cram in the benches. But, yes, they are not at all comfortable

                    (Unless you want to consider the whole idea of shoe-horning the building where they did as 'cheap'. But it allows them to share equipment - Zambonis, video control facilities, environment control (?) - with the Kohl Center.)

                    The only others I've been to are Amsoil - which is just beautiful - and the building is St Charles, MO - which is an ugly, ugly building, with lousy ice. (And that has nothing to do with the outcome of the games.)
                    Last edited by robertearle; 11-08-2017, 09:54 PM.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                      Enough piling on LaBahn. It's a newer building, the building is impeccably still shiny and new feeling and looking. Robert is right in that the UW campus being smack dab in the center of Madison has many challenges for facility placement. If you are ever there you can see for yourself. Sure it would be nice if it was bigger and had better seating, but it's way better than playing in the Kohl Center. It's probably better than every rink out east.
                      Wisconsin Hockey: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 WE WANT MORE!
                      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Come to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
                      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Originally Posted by Wisko McBadgerton:
                      "Baggot says Hughes and Rockwood are centering the top two lines...
                      Timothy A --> Great hockey mind... Or Greatest hockey mind?!?"

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                      • #26
                        Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                        I've been to a little over half of the D1 rinks: RMU, MU, LU, HC, PU, QU, PSU, RIT, BC, NE, SU, VT, BU, MC, CT, WI, OSU, UMD

                        My favourites are:
                        UMD, QU, Princeton, RIT, PSU, VT

                        The worst:
                        OSU, LU, Hurst, CT, Cuse

                        I don't have reference point for some of the others mentioned, since I haven't been to them...yet

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                        • #27
                          Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                          Originally posted by TinyViking View Post
                          I'll defend LaBahn as my home rink, although what I really love about it is the crowd. Nearly every game has some great fan energy. We have already had some sold out games this year. The seats are not too shallow for me, although I am rather small. I'll finally get to a game at Ridder this season for some comparison. Every Ridder game I have watched online looks pretty empty - even the WCHA championship. For a top-performing team, I'm surprised MN hasn't done more to build-up the fan base.
                          MN fans just aren't the bandwagon jumpers cheeseheads are, we don't need a winning team to build up our self concept.
                          that and the fact MadCity doesn't have competition from pro sports like Mpls/StP does

                          women tell me I got a great tush, so I stand, ... to protect the assets

                          LaBahn has superior sight lines since the seating rises faster, but having support columns gobble up good standing room (likely a result of the already mentioned cost cutting) is a huge negative. If not for the support columns I'd rate it #1, I like the fact that it does have small capacity, creates a nice lively environment. Free parking nearby plus avenues for walking/biking thru the heart of town, and campus friendly places for alumni (or opposing fans).

                          Ridder has the best overall sightlines, and the fact that they took a warehouse and turned it into something interesting earns it bonus points. Worst acoustics in any building I have ever been in. Also the location in an urban campus is not a place you want to bring kids to, too many young males driving around without regard to peds. Plus it is too much of a bottleneck to drive to, especially in a city that is trying to ban cars. So ride the trolly, but that consumes too much time. Another negative is not an alumni friendly place like MadCity.

                          The Ralph - if it is so good, why could they only draw a handful of fans?

                          Amsoil - too shallow of seating makes inferior sight lines, best food, in fact the only food I would purchase at a hockey game. Nice scoreboard. Nice that you can park downtown and use skyway, although a bit of a maze to walk thru. In addition, if you want to take a stroll between periods, nice wide concourse. best rest rooms.

                          nobody else matters
                          Last edited by pokechecker; 11-09-2017, 08:01 AM.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                            Originally posted by ARM View Post
                            The advantages that Ridder has over LaBahn is that you can fit another ~ 1K people in there if you have to and the support upstairs to handle bigger events.
                            Honestly I think the biggest advantage that Ridder has is that it's a work of art -- the whole building is covered in maroon and gold with giant murals everywhere. It's awe-inspiring. You feel like caring so much about the sport means something when you walk in.

                            Which is why looking at LaBahn is so frustrating, despite the slashed costs. You can do a lot to make a place look better with a few strokes with a paintbrush.
                            Grant Salzano, Boston College '10
                            Writer Emeritus, BC Interruption
                            Twitter: @Salzano14


                            Click here for the BC Interruption Pairwise, KRACH, and GRaNT Calculators

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                            • #29
                              Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                              Penn State's Pegula Ice Arena - what's not to like about it? I sit up at concourse level, where there is a continuous countertop and rolling chairs. The concessions are typically expensive and pretty limited, but that's probably true at every arena. The student section at one end of the arena is a madhouse during men's games (well, the whole arena is). It's a great place to watch hockey.

                              A couple things I don't understand. With the Pegula money, why didn't they build a parking deck? The men's games are always packed - that's 6000 fans looking for parking. Even for women's games, I've been turned away at the lot entrance (ticket in hand) because some other event was using the small lot for overflow parking.

                              Another policy I really don't understand is that once you enter the arena and get your ticket scanned, you're locked in for the duration. You can't leave the arena between periods, you can't run out to your car, etc, unless you want to buy a new ticket to get back in, even though you've already paid for the game. If there's a sensible reason for locking you in, I'd love to hear it.

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                              • #30
                                Re: Favorite Rinks (D1 & D3)

                                Originally posted by ZedLeppelin View Post
                                Another policy I really don't understand is that once you enter the arena and get your ticket scanned, you're locked in for the duration. You can't leave the arena between periods, you can't run out to your car, etc, unless you want to buy a new ticket to get back in, even though you've already paid for the game. If there's a sensible reason for locking you in, I'd love to hear it.
                                Eh that's true at every arena I've ever been to, other than for events with multiple games like the Frozen Four.

                                EDIT: Other than women's arenas that don't require tickets, obviously.
                                Last edited by TonyTheTiger20; 11-09-2017, 07:52 AM.
                                Grant Salzano, Boston College '10
                                Writer Emeritus, BC Interruption
                                Twitter: @Salzano14


                                Click here for the BC Interruption Pairwise, KRACH, and GRaNT Calculators

                                Comment

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