Moncton Wildcats
Rink: Avenir Centre
Capacity: 8,800
Built: 2018
League: QMJHL
City: Moncton, New Brunswick
Home Of: Moncton Wildcats
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: October 22, 2023 vs Val d’Or
Unique Arena: #71
QMJHL Arena: #20
The Avenir Centre is the QMJHL’s newest building and perhaps one of the most impressive in all of the CHL. It is a giant building in downtown Moncton that announces its presence and has the look of a giant entertainment centre where big things take place, which is basically the point. It also has a nice parkette area out front with what looks to be an area that can be a splash pad in the summer and a rink in the winter. The main entrance as you can see has a lot of glass windows that lets natural light into the building (though there are curtains that block that light from getting into the bowl itself), and those windows extend much of the way around the building. With downtown rinks parking can be tough to find, but there is a giant lot behind Avenir Centre (though it costs an odd $13 on gameday). I’m told if you’re there early enough, finding free street parking nearby is very possible.
Let’s get it out of the way. The Avenir Centre is too big for the Moncton Wildcats, but that was never the point. The city wanted a big venue to nab big time shows that could also double up with Halifax for trips to the Maritimes that weren’t happening enough with the lack of buildings like this. So, before you lay an 8,800-seat arena that realistically no junior franchise would even come close to filling on a regular basis. That said the Wildcats now have a palace to play in. A few years into its life and everything still has that shiny new look to it. The seats are all comfortable and extend far up, so that if you’re someone like me that likes to watch games at a higher angle you won’t be disappointed. Seeing as the Wildcats aren’t able to fill the building the entire lower half of seats behind one net have been retracted and turned into a giant kid’s zone with bounce houses and other activities to keep the youngsters entertained. Same idea but opposite outcome to what they have in Saint John. Like most new buildings, the concourse is wide and has plenty of options for food/drink. There is also a well-stocked team store at ground level as you enter the building, but if during the game you don’t want to go back down that way there are a couple souvenir kiosks on the main concourse as well.
The Avenir Centre also did something a little different in that instead of putting suites all the way around the top of the bowl like many clone rinks do, they decided to put them all on one side of the rink and stack them on top of each other. This makes the bowl on the penalty box side of the rink about an average height of a junior hockey rink, but it allows the seats on the other three sides to extend much further off the ice than most buildings. It kind of reminds me of the WFCU Centre in Windsor, but if they took their single big end of seats and went all the way around the ice with it. Seating here is a bit shallower than the WFCU Centre counterpart but still good enough to offer great views of the ice. The videoboard is professionally run and the sound system to me is perfect, with the sound levels high but not so high you can’t talk to people around you. Also, you can never get lost in Avenir Centre as it has the biggest section signs I’ve ever seen.
If you were ranking the top buildings in the CHL just on facilities alone, you would probably have Moncton at number one for buildings that aren’t already hosts to the NHL (Edmonton) or built specifically for the hopes of a future NHL team (Quebec). The Wildcats play in a beautiful building that has not only anything you could want at a game, but the team tries to put some soul into as well with Wildcats logos, colours and photos in the concourse and outside the building. But try as they might, the atmosphere in Moncton obviously is the con about this building. It’s not the fault of the team or their fans, it’s just too big of a building for the QMJHL level. Hell, most AHL teams wouldn’t be able to fill this place regularly. The good news is the city of Moncton is now able to host top tier events, and the Wildcats have a jewel to call their home for decades to come. It’s not my favourite building in the league, but it might be the most impressive outside of the spaceship NHL building in Quebec City.
