Original Six arenas complete

As you may know if you've looked at my bucket list tab above, one of my life goals is to go see all 32 NHL teams arenas. I was hoping to do it all in one trip but after realizing that it wouldn't be possible, I needed to break the goal into smaller ones.

During the 2016 pre-season, Sidney Crosby suffered another concussion and I figured that he would retire in the next couple of years so I decided that I wanted to see him play before he did. It would be expensive and I wasn't ready at the time to travel to the USA by myself so instead I took a trip to Edmonton in 2017 and watched the Oilers take on the Penguins. Of course, Crosby still hasn't retired almost 10 years later which is insane. After that, my goal was to see my favourite Halifax Mooseheads player in a live game again so in 2020, I visited Winnipeg to see Nikolaj Ehlers and the Jets play.

Statue outside Centre Bell

My next small goal was to finish seeing the Original 6 teams since I had already seen a New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden and a Toronto Maple Leafs game at Air Canada Centre. While MSG is the only arena remaining from the Original Six era (1942-67), this still gave me a direction. I already talked about my trip Boston, Chicago and Detroit back in 2022 so I just had the Montreal Canadiens to watch. I have tried to go over the last few years but I had been unemployed for a lot of that and even when I did have a job, was difficult to get the time off and money saved for it. This past weekend I was finally able to check off the last current arena of the Original Six as I visited Montreal over Easter. This post will be about the game but if you are more interested in my full trip, check back later this month.

I arrived to Centre Bell before the doors even opened and there were quite a few people outside already. I looked around a bit, they had a few statues on one side of their popular players and plaques about 100 greatest moments in the Canadiens history. Once I got in, I went to the team store to get my souviner puck and lapel pin but after looking around standing in the crazy long line, I decided not to buy the puck that I had found. I looked around on the 100 level some then went up to the 300 level to find the section I was in.

View of arena from my seat

Another thing I do on these trips is get food at the arena and got a boring hot dog and fountain pop. The hot dog was small, like what you would have at a BBQ and cost about $5.50 but the 24oz pop was more expensive which was surprising. After I finished eating, I found my seat and boy was I glad that I was not against the back wall because the upper levels were steep and high up. I watched the New Jersey Devils visit the Montreal Canadiens on April 5 as it worked out the best since I had four days off & the Devils have two former Halifax Mooseheads players on their team. One of them; Timo Meier scored early in the first period to give New Jersey a 1-0 lead. There were many times during the game that the fans were yelling Go Habs Go and boo'd Jack Hughes. Every time Canadiens forward Cole Caufield touched the puck, the crowd cheered and exclaimed when he missed putting the puck in the net as he was trying to score his 50th goal of the season. I was really hoping he would get it even though the Canadiens are my least favourite NHL team or that they at least would get a goal at all so I could see how loud the crowd would get. In the end, the Devils won 3-0 so Meier's goal was the game winner.

Smallest hot dog I've ever seen at a hockey game

During the first intermission I just stayed in my seat but in the second, I went to get more food. Centre Bell had the normal arena foods like hot dogs, burgers, nachos, popcorn, etc but you could also get Pizza Pizza and PFK (or KFC as we would say in English). Instead of their greasy chicken, they provided chicken tenders and popcorn chicken. So I got chicken tenders and fries with buttermilk ranch dip. It was pretty good, wishing I had gotten that originally. On my way out I saw the store was still open so I popped back in and was able to get a better puck and find a pin as well which made me happy.

The arena is certainly the biggest one I have been to so far and the loudest for sure. Considering how well they are doing this season (Montreal had clinched a playoff spot that day), I was disappointed I didn't see a victory.

New Jersey Devils victory huddle

So my next goal is to finish visiting the Canadian team arenas which will be Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver.