Colorado Avalanche’s Game Presentation For Stanley Cup Final Carries Wow Factor At Ball Arena
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The Vegas Golden Knights may pride themselves on being the kings of game presentation in the National Hockey League, but the Colorado Avalanche provided an adrenalin-pumping show during the Stanley Cup Final Game One at Ball Arena on Wednesday.
The VGK’s arena has a sound system that is among the loudest in the NHL and the colorful and creative on-ice images before Golden Knights games are attention-grabbing. Case in point: pre-game for the Seattle Kraken vs Golden Knights season-opening game for VGK Year 5.
But the Avalanche arena show was nothing but impressive last night when the Tampa Bay Lightning came to the Platte Valley arena built in downtown Denver more than 20 years ago. Sports are spectacles, the modern drama of the Colosseum and they produce adrenalin rushes amid packed venues that cannot be replicated anywhere else in our lives.
I especially liked the start of the third period when the Avs’ game presentation crew projected a guitar image onto the length of the ice as The Who’s Teenage Wasteland blared from the sound system to accompany the Colorado players skating into the rink.
Take as look:
The SCF Game One scene was electric inside the venue, which had an attendance of 17,778 for an exciting game won by Colorado in overtime.
The arena sound system was loud, just not as loud as the one at T-Mobile Arena for Golden Knights games.
It was wall-to-wall humanity inside Ball Arena, where jubilant Colorado fans were stoked through the night. I didn’t witness any obnoxious and unruly fan behavior and saw hardly any Lightning fans in the building.
The arena’s center-hung scoreboard was clear with easy-to-read numbers and information.
Frankly, I was both thrilled and nostalgic to be inside the arena for the first time after I wrote the arena groundbreaking story for The Denver Post 25 years ago in November 1997. The Avs won their last Stanley Cup in 2001 while playing at their Ball Arena, which opened in 1999.
NHL Chief Content Officer Steve Mayer told LVSportsBiz.com this week that he expected both the Avalanche and Lightning to be at the top of their game presentations for the Stanley Cup Final. The arenas for both NHL teams are known to be among the best in the league for creating the show inside the game.
LVSportsBiz.com Stanley Cup Final coverage presented by Las Vegas real estate agent Liz Lane and ISM bicycle saddles of Tampa
