Earlier this week I was watching the St. Louis Blues face off against the Washington Capitals. Besides the game having some good highlights, like Capitals goaltender Semyon Varlamov’s acrobatic save against Brad Boyes in the ending minutes of the first period, I was intrigued by the St. Louis Blues arena. More specific, the St. Louis Blues have blue colored beams for the glass boards. Watching the game in HD made for a pretty cool effect.
I began to wonder, what about other teams having colored beams for their arenas as well? Maybe the Anaheim Ducks with their neon orange, or the Detroit Red Wings with their Red Wing red? What do you think about the colored beams? Good, bad, doesn’t matter? Is there a team in the NHL that you would like to see with some as well and what color?
Below is an image courtesy of Getty Images. Also, a video can be seen showing the beams during of an intermission “Hamster Race“. It’s a pretty cool video, especially 49 seconds in when yellow navigates the corner a little rough and takes a fall. Another video I found did not show the boards unfortunately, but had some good commentary regarding a few cougars.
Because of me watching a lot of out-of-market teams on Center Ice, I know that Atlanta (blue), Philadelphia (orange) and Carolina (red) have team-colored beams on their glass. Personally I rather have seam-less glass where there are no beams. In the newer arenas, they are connected/stablized at the top. There’s no obstructed vision because of the beams and no weird bounces from pucks that hit them.