Newfoundland Regiment
Rink: Mary Brown’s Centre
Capacity: 6,287
Built: 2001
League: QMJHL
City: St. John’s, Newfoundland
Home Of: Newfoundland Regiment
Games Attended: 2
First Game: November 7, 2025 vs Cape Breton
Most Recent Game: November 8, 2025 vs Cape Breton
Unique Arena: #115
QMJHL Arena: #21
When I started venturing out on road trips in the OHL during the mid-late 2000’s, I was a pretty fresh driver and my home rink was the then Powerade Centre in Brampton. I liked the idea of rinks in the suburbs with large parking lots that were easy to get in and get out of, no need for tight parking garages, or God forbid – parallel parking! As I grew older and became more confident in my driving skills to the point that it is now my profession, I realized having your arena in a centralized downtown location is usually the much better way to go. While there are many arenas across the CHL with downtown locations, there might be none better than the Mary Brown’s Centre in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland, home of over the years to every major hockey league in North America except the NHL. Now in 2025 it’s the QMJHL’s Regiment. It’s located in the heart of the city next to city hall and within easy walking distance of all the best bars and restaurants. There is also a pedestrian bridge over top of busy New Gower St connecting the rink with the city’s convention centre.
Most of the entrances to the rink are along New Gower St, as the arena is built into the side of a hill (as is pretty much the entire city) so the back side of the rink only really has emergency exits. The entrance under the main arena signage has a small lobby with a box office, but once through there you’re spilled onto the main concourse with the team store just to your left. The concourse is one of the most conventional in the CHL. It is located about halfway up the bowl and runs under the seats. It is not overly wide so with a full house it can be tough to navigate. It has all your usual concession and bar stands, including of course a Mary Brown’s Chicken. However there is very little in the way of team colours or history on display. Obviously being a first-year team (after a relocation) there is no Regiment history to display yet. I was at the team’s 13th & 14th home games after the team moved from Bathurst, New Brunswick in the summer of 2025. But the rink has been home to the AHL’s Maple Leafs and IceCaps as well as the ECHL’s Growlers. While the Growlers’ 2019 Kelly Cup Championship banner hangs proudly in the rafters, there is little else acknowledging the history of hockey in the city or province.
The arena bowl itself is one version of a clone seen across the CHL. I liken it to a mix between the Paramount Fine Foods Centre in Mississauga and the CN Coliseum in Prince George. There is capacity for just over 6,000 people (with suites) in a single bowl going a full 360 degrees around the ice surface. There is a level of suites laid out in a U shape above the bowl with some extra club seating at the top of the U. In the rafters on the penalty box side hangs the Bob Cole Media Centre, named after one of the greatest to ever call the game who hailed from St. John’s. The seats are all new having been replaced recently, they are dark blue which happens to match one of the Regiment’s main colours. The original seats had been maroon, also like in Mississauga. As isolated as Newfoundland is, coming in for just one game isn’t an option, so unlike many of the QMJHL or WHL arenas I have visited outside of Memorial Cup tournaments, I got two slightly different experiences over the course of two nights at Mary Brown’s Centre. The first night saw a crowd of 4,300 watch a fairly boring game that the hometown team dropped 3-1. The second night also ended with a 3-1 loss for the Regiment, but it was a much better game to watch and a larger crowd of 5,100 were much more engaged over the sixty minutes of play than the night before. The atmosphere night one was that of a morgue. Night two was much more engaged and while not even close to among the best I’ve seen in the CHL it wasn’t bad either.
There is a common misconception that hockey teams in Newfoundland fail because they don’t have good enough support from the locals. This just isn’t true. Whether the rink has hosted the AHL, ECHL or QMJHL the team has done well at the gate. Midway through their first season, the Regiment have the third best average attendance in the league behind only the attendance juggernauts of Quebec and Halifax. The problem not only has been travel subsidy issues (the home team must pay for the travel expenses of the vistors) but also (especially true in the QMJHL Fog Devils days) the city who owned the building and the team were at odds and got an unfavorable lease. People ask, what is different this time? This time the city and the team are united, and while the Regiment do have to pay for the visitors’ travel expenses still, they have far fewer hurdles to jump over than previous teams. To the casual fan it is probably better than the hometown team now has rivals from places like Moncton, Halifax and PEI as opposed to Wheeling, Toledo and Norfolk.
I for one think that this time it truly will work in Newfoundland. As a fan the experience in St. John’s probably ranks somewhere near the middle of the CHL. Nothing that blew me away, but nothing negative either. If you’re a well-travelled visitor such as myself, you’ve seen similar rinks in the CHL, and similar rinks done better, but if you’re a hometown fan that has to come back week after week it would definitely be a version of old faithful. While the arena itself isn’t spectacular the scenery around it is. This was my first ever trip to Newfoundland, which previously had been the only province of the ten in Canada I had yet to visit, and I was blown away by the beauty of the land and the laid-back atmosphere of the city itself. For that reason, more than any other you should make the trip one day and I hope to come back at some point.
