Baseball season is back, but two teams find themselves playing in minor league stadiums. The two unlucky tenants are the Tampa Bay Rays and Athletics. The Tampa Bay Rays are doing so because of no fault of their own as their real home arena Tropicana Field sustained extensive hurricane damage.
The Athletics, formerly from Oakland, are in the process of moving to Las Vegas but had no stadium in place before their new home is constructed. They made a makeshift deal to play in Sacramento for the next few seasons.
Seeing major league teams in minor league digs got us thinking about the NHL teams that have called less-than-spectacular arenas home. We take a look at some arenas the NHL would never consider putting a team in today. We considered all teams and stadiums in the post-1991 expansion era when the San Jose Sharks entered the league. Not surprisingly, they are first on our list.
Cow Palace
The Golden State Warriors moved out of the outdated Oakland Arena to San Francisco’s shiny new Chase Center in 2019. Although their predecessor, the California Golden Seals, once called Oakland Arena home, the San Jose Sharks never did.
For their first two seasons the Sharks played at the Cow Palace, a historic venue in Daly City. The venue has hosted a number of sports teams, including the aforementioned Warriors, but is mainly known as a cattle exposition center and place for rodeos, where it earned it’s named.
Players remember the arena being outdated and having a leaky roof and having to go upstairs to get to the dressing room. The Cow Palace also had a smaller than regulation NHL rink and the NHL had rejected its use for the former Golden Seals team. The venue sat 11,000 for the Sharks and routinely sold out. Since the Sharks departure, the Cow Palace has played home to other minor league hockey teams.
Ottawa Civic Center
Much like the Sharks, the Senators new building wasn’t ready for their beginning. Instead they played in the 10,000 seat Ottawa Civic Center for the first three and a half years of their existence, moving to what is now Canadian Tire Center in January 1996.
Ottawa Civic Center didn’t have an upper bowl and the number of rows on either side of the ice wasn’t equal. The NHL tried to put some temporary seating in to increase capacity, but looking at pictures of those early Senators games really makes you think “An NHL team actually played here?”
The arena interestingly hosts two different sports, as there is an outdoor area with seating built alongside the arena for football. For all the complaints Canadian Tire Center gets, at least it’s better than the Civic Center. The Senators are still in a year’s long quest to build a new home.
The Expo Hall
Most hockey fans, especially Tampa Bay Lightning fans, know the stories of the old Thunderdome. The Tampa Bay Rays home baseball field (you know the one we said was almost destroyed by a hurricane) played host to the Lightning before MLB even granted Tampa Bay a baseball team.
To this day the arena, since renamed Tropicana field, holds the NHL record for largest playoff game attendance for a 1996 game against the Philadelphia Flyers that saw over 28,000 fans in the stands.
Before that, the Lightning spent their inaugural season in 1992-1993 at The Expo Hall at the Tampa Fairgrounds. That arena was like the Ottawa Civic Center in many ways as it only sat 10,000 fans. Just like the Cow Palace it was also used as a place for livestock shows and had hosted other sports teams, namely college and minor professional leagues, in the past.
The arena was slightly more symmetrical than the Ottawa Civic Center but still has a “too small for the big show” look. Unlike the Sharks and Senators extended stays at their temporary homes, the Lightning only played one year at the Expo Hall before upgrading to the Thunder Dome.
Their current arena, Amalie Arena, wouldn’t be completed until 1996. Expo Hall is still around today but used for just that, an expo hall. The Lightning YouTube channel posted a video in 2023 with team founders Phil Esposito and Henry Paul reminiscing about their former arenas, including the Expo Hall.
Why The NHL Could Avoid MLB’s Problem
Here’s a completely hypothetical scenario: what if an NHL team had to temporarily move arenas? Could they see themselves moving into smaller arenas like the Athletics and Rays? Most likely NHL teams could potentially be spared the same fate for a few reasons.
First, of the 12 NHL teams that currently share a market with an NBA team, five either have their own arena or have multiple arenas in the area (for example, Los Angeles has two major indoor sports arena between Crypto.com arena and the Intuit Dome). Also many minor league hockey teams share arenas with their NBA brethren. Just because they are “minor league” doesn’t mean they play in a building that lacks capacity.
All of our examples of arenas of hockey past were teams moving into a new market. The closest the NHL experienced to our examples, a team moving into a less than perfect and not brand new hockey building, was with the Utah Hockey Club this past offseason. Yes there are obstructed seats and a lower capacity than most arenas, but Delta Center is still a major league facility and an upgrade over Mullet Arena in capacity terms.