Barrie Colts

Rink: Sadlon Arena
Capacity 4,195
Built: 1995
League: OHL
City: Barrie, Ontario
Home Of: Barrie Colts
Games Attended: 29
First Visit: October 25, 2007 vs Sault Ste. Marie
Most Recent Game: December 20, 2025 vs London
Unique Arena: #7
OHL Arena: #3

For years this rink was called the Barrie Molson Centre, named after the nearby plant which gave the land to the city for the rink to be built on in the mid 90’s. Nearly 25 years later when the naming rights expired, Molson wanted nothing to do with the rink anymore, but there was no new sponsor lined up, so the city and arena kept using the name to which Molson eventually had to send a cease and desist. Eventually Paul Sadlon Motors (a local car dealer) bought the naming rights. Just to the left of the above photo is a giant free parking lot, which is a plus, though it can be a very cold walk into the rink during what can be brutal winters in Simcoe County. When the arena was built in 1995 it sat near not much else. Now it sits in big box hell at the highly congested Mapleview Dr exit off the 400 at the south end of Barrie. Luckily there are tons of restaurant options across the street from the rink as well as one inside the arena itself.

When the Sadlon Arena was built it was considered state of the art, but even then a tad small. In 1995 standards around the CHL weren’t as high as they are today, but with only 4,200 seats it didn’t take long to realize that perhaps the rink was built a bit too small. The team spent its first 20 years bidding over and over to host the Memorial Cup and got denied each time. As we have reached the 2020’s the team has stopped bidding and are now focused on what they can do to renovate the arena to get it up to the standard of hosting big events. The rink feels bigger than its advertised capacity thanks to steep seating and a high roof but its concourses are pretty cramped when the rink is full, which is much of the time. Even though Barrie has big crowds it has a reputation for being very quiet that I have never fully understood. Perhaps that was from when before I started going to games there regularly, but I have always found Barrie to have a decent atmosphere, not blow-you-away good but better than average.

All the suites in Barrie are on the penalty box side of the arena, but it is the only rink I’ve ever seen that has them at ice level. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure the view from those ice level suites would be all that great, though the views from the seats directly above them are pretty great. The video scoreboard might be one of the least utilized in the entire OHL. Most of the time the screen just shows ads, during the play and during stoppages. They sometimes show replays of goals, but the replay might get cut off halfway through with GO COLTS GO coming up on the screen. Obviously, these days ads are a big revenue generator, and you got to have them on the screen, but to never show the play and barely show replays at all is not a good use for a videoboard.

Barrie has been a successful franchise on the ice with an OHL title and several conference and division banners dotting the ceiling. However, one thing Barrie has that I’ve not seen anywhere else is the banners that show all the franchise record stats for things like goals, assists, points, PIM’s, wins, goals against average etc. Not just the all-time stats but records for a single season as well. In addition to that they have banners for each of the Colts alumni that have gone on to win a Stanley Cup.

There has been talk in the last few years of big renovations to Sadlon Arena, most notably adding more seats behind the net in the non restaurant end of the building as well as heavily upgrading the player facilities. Both of those would require expanding the buildings footprint on at least two sides, but luckily there is room outside of the arena for that. However so far that renovation talk has just remained that, talk.