Just a few days ago I was lucky enough to attend the first ever hockey game by the PENS at Consol Energy Center. Now granted it was a pre-season game, it was the first. The first puck drop, the first time the penalty box was used, the first time a fight occurred, the first wave, the first kiss cam, all in front of the first sell-out crowd... All for a measly pre-season game!! But I made some observations on the atmosphere and the event itself (because that's what sporting events really are any more, a full out event, not just a game).
Pro- for PR Mare; Con- for fan Mare, Everything is sponsored: We have the "Powerball Powerplay," the "GNC Penalty Kill," each intermission was sponsored, heck even the Star Spangled Banner was brought to us by someone! I do recall some of the sponsors, so the advertising/marketing was effective to an extent. But I feel by both PR Mare and fan Mare, that they are saturating the game/event. There have always been sponsors, other then on the boards and ice and Ice Time game program, but now having everything sponsored seems like an overkill to me. It was to the point I was annoyed to hear another sponsor, and was waiting for each puck drop to be brought to me by someone. Both Mare's understand that this beautiful new arena isn't possible without sponsors, but something a little more subtle needs put in place. Being the fan that I am, I know with or without First Niagara, the second intermission will take place, and by golly you try and stop Jeff Jimerson from gracing us with our National Anthem!
No Pro- No Con, Marketing theme "Destiny has a new home." : Only thing that hasn't had me buy into this completely is part of me feels like it's marketing the new arena more then the team. Yes the destiny is that of the PENS, but I get caught up on the "new home" part and get the image of just the arena stuck in my head. However, the commercials I've seen so far definitely have me excited. So I can't claim it as a pro or a con, just an observation! *Tiny disclaimer: I REALLY loved "A Great Day for Hockey" campaign so all other campaigns for me really have to attempt to compete with that, and I haven't found one that really does!
Pro/Con Scoreboard: Having a scoreboard that's bigger than a house is ridiculously awesome (tiny exaggeration but for real. It's huge.) Add in there that the footage is shown in HD is simply the coolest thing ever. The Con comes from the tiny placement of the penalty player and time, as well as the shots on goal and time outs. These appear above the big screen that shows the game, on a long skinny board, but I felt those few info things could be up sized a bit. It was hard to read the category that was being displayed (TOL especially.)
Con, but can be easily fixed, acoustics: Turn Katie O'Malley's mic down or at least the high button. She was spiking lots. Not good.
Pro, seats: Seriously, while I haven't set in them all (although I did the little tour a few weeks back and walked around a lot of them) there is not a bad seat in the place. While at Mellon, I sat in a lot of sections, and really there were some awful seats. One game I spent more time trying to find a new place to watch from then even seeing the game. I sat in section 232, Row J, (section only goes to M or N) and the view was perfect! These guys really knew what they were doing when they put this together! The only con I had on any placement of seating is that with the runway going right to the players bench, the players didn't run out like they used to and I couldn't see players go down the runway during game time. While it was a preseason game and they might just have not felt like running, I like being able to always see what's going on with the players, and simply couldn't.
Misc.
- The Ice Crew which used to be the PENS Patrol I do believe, is now made up of both males and females and aside from throwing out shirts and dancing around they clean the ice during game time stoppages. My thought is, do the older guys who have been cleaning the ice all these years feel sad and displaced, or are they still making the same amount of money so enjoying relaxing during the periods and only having to tend to the ice on intermissions now...?
- I love efficiency and I am confident the routes the Zamboni's take (and always have been taking since I've been going to PENS games) is the most efficient. I see other routes at other arenas, and well, I think they're not accomplishing the job nearly as effectively time wise, then what the PENS Zamboni drivers do. So shout out to the Zamboni drivers on a route well taken.
- Bathrooms are huge. This should be moved up to a Pro list because I was pretty impressed to experience no lines at the women's restroom before or after the game!
- Finally to touch on the play of the PENS. Obviously you have lots of guys playing during preseason that you'll never see again during the season. But all in all as a team I thought passing looked good, accepting passes which always seems to be a problem was decent, and all in all I thought the PENS came out ready to play, while the Red Wings must have hired some kids down the street to put on their uniforms for the first 2 periods. Definitely didn't resemble anything that looked like the Red Wings to me.
So after all those observations, I'm excited for Hocktober (# goes out to the Twitterverse on coming up with that beautiful term! :) ). The arena is super cool, and while there's pros and cons to both the shiny and new, and the old charm of the old, the new is nice, and for the time being we can still see the old...
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