Utah's NHL rink has thousands of seats without full view of the ice
The last thing you should worry about when buying a ticket to an NHL hockey game is your ability to see the entire ice surface ā but it looks like fans of the Utah Hockey Club will have to take that into account this season.
As the NHL moves away from the Arizona Coyotes and embraces the emergence of Utah’s new team, it seems like some arena drama of a different kind will continue.
One hockey fan was able to score tickets to one of Utah’s preseason games this week and the view from their seat was not exactly ideal. Whenever the puck went below the half boards at one end of the rink, the play would be completely blocked from the fan’s seat, leaving out one of the nets and potentially causing anyone who sat in that seat to completely miss a goal.
View at the Utah arena blocks one side of the ice
byu/Duffleman0609 inhockey
It was known that the Delta Center, which served primarily as the home of the NBA’s Utah Jazz before the NHL’s arrival, would undergo some growing pains in being able to accommodate sightlines for a hockey game.
A flurry of renovations had to be made to the arena to accommodate the new hockey team, specifically the addition of dressing rooms, a coach’s room, and a training staff area.
The arena currently boasts about 10,000 seats with an unobstructed view. An additional 6,000 seats, located primarily in the upper bowl of each end zone of the rink, are labelled as having a “partial ice view” and are being sold at discounted prices.
A quick look at the rink shows reduced lower bowl seating on either end, as the bleachers had to be pushed back to accommodate the ice surface, which is much bigger than an NBA hardcourt.
.@deltacenter is almost ready for puck drop š¤© pic.twitter.com/oFbFzDseRw
— Utah Hockey Club (@utahhockeyclub) September 23, 2024
Having thousands of seats with obstructed views is not ideal, but this is expected to be a temporary issue for the team. Utah owner Ryan Smith is aware of the sightline issues and is working on a plan to fix them through renovations.
These renovations, however, aren’t expected to start until April 2025 and could take until 2027 to complete.
According to comments made by Chris Armstrong, Utah’s president of hockey operations, one temporary solution that has been floated out is raising the floor of the arena to get more eyeballs on the entire rink.
“The possibility of raising the floor would address some of the issues with respect to some of the existing partial or limited-view seats that we have in the building,” Armstrong said in an interview with FOX 13 Salt Lake City.
The poor sightlines don’t seem to have deterred Utah fans all that much.Ā KSL News was able to chat with multiple fans who sat in these obstructed views. These fans gave rave reviews of their in-game experience and were willing to give the team time to fix the issue.
Fans on social media, however, were less forgiving after seeing just how poor the sightlines were during an actual game.
“Legit might be the worst seats in the whole league,” said one Reddit user.
It’s not the type of thing you want to go viral after your first preseason game at your home rink, but the noise surrounding the obstructed views will only get louder until they are addressed.