Wheeling Nailers
Rink: WesBanco Arena
Capacity: 5,406
Built: 1977
League: ECHL
City: Wheeling, West Virginia
Home Of: Wheeling Nailers
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: February 24, 2024 vs Kalamazoo
Unique Arena: #81
ECHL Arena: #5
WesBanco Arena sits in downtown Wheeling right on the banks of the Ohio River, which separates West Virginia from Ohio. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is only about a 10-minute drive in the opposite direction. During my visit to Wheeling, the downtown area was in a state of transition. The roads were in horrible shape (being from Hamilton that’s saying something), but lots of construction was underway to assumingly make things better. A very large and new looking parking garage sits right next to the arena (just to the left of this photo) while we managed to park for free on the street a few blocks away.
The building itself is from the middle of the 70s, however a fairly new front lobby was built onto it sometime in the last decade, much like junior rinks in Rimouski and Owen Sound. The transition from the new front addition and the original structure is fairly easy to spot, and as you can see there’s no mistaking what team calls this arena home from the outside.
It became very obvious once entering the arena bowl that this building wasn’t exactly built with hockey in mind. The Civic Center (as it was originally named) is a separate four grandstand setup with no real corner seats. Seats that are close to the corners don’t face the ice surface at all, really. Also, the arena floor is just barely long enough to accommodate a 200ft long ice surface. Behind one net there is maybe a five-foot gap between the boards and concrete wall that’s under the seats, while the other side might have 10 feet max. The result of this is that even with fairly steep seating you cannot see the net in your own end if you have end zone seats any farther back than row 1. I highly recommend not buying end zone seats here. The sides however provide a great view of the ice (as seen in this photo). There is an in-bowl concourse between the two levels of seating that allows you to walk fully around the ice surface. This mid-level concourse has some VIP/bar area seating in the two corners of one end of the rink. The opposite end of the rink has ice level bars in the other corners. While the floor can barely handle the 200-foot length of the ice, it appears that if needed the width of the floor could easily accommodate Olympic style ice, as the first several rows on the sides are collapsible.
I mentioned the interior concourse within the arena bowl. There is one outside of the bowl that also goes fully around the arena that is maybe 10-15 feet above ice level and oddly is fully carpeted. Also, that external concourse has every available surface covered in awards, hall of fames and various displays of athletes and teams from the greater Ohio Valley area across all sports. It’s honestly amazing to see as the building basically doubling as a sports museum for the area. There are also two separate team stores. One in the new front lobby that is fairly large for minor/junior hockey standards, as well as another slightly smaller store in the main concourse in one corner of the rink. While my travel partner and I did not buy any concessions, there appeared to be a very wide variety of options at WesBanco Arena. However, I will say the bathroom situation isn’t the best as there is only one set of restrooms on each side of the arena and the lines at intermission were very long. Also worth noting that getting into the bowl from the exterior concourse requires going up a couple half flights of stairs (that actually protrude outwards on the exterior of the building) and through a set of doors that lead you to the inner concourse.
I wanted to point out that for such an old and unique building that the Nailers have a great media production for the game and use their videoboard and sound system very well. Pregame special effects also give people the option of using an app that can control the flashlight on your cell phone to go the beat of whatever music they’re using which I thought was neat. The crowd in Wheeling were great too. Our game had an attendance of a little over 3,100 but it was a loud and very engaged 3,100. The actual seats in Wheeling are also very padded and comfortable even though many (at least a third of them) have obstructed views or terrible angles of view.
WesBanco Arena definitely has its flaws, and I can’t say I will rank it super high if I ever do an ECHL rink ranking, but as an out of towner it was a unique and very enjoyable experience that I am very happy I did.
