Boston Bruins
Rink: TD Garden
Capacity: 17,850
Built: 1995
League: NHL
City: Boston, Massachusetts
Home Of: Boston Bruins
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: November 16, 2024 vs St.Louis
Unique Arena: #99
NHL Arena: #13
The TD Garden was built in the early/mid 90s in the north end of downtown Boston right next to its predecessor Garden. Soon after the original Garden was town down, and new buildings now occupy the space as the new Garden feels shoehorned in between high-rise buildings and highway ramps. This was the best exterior shot I could get on foot.
Getting to the Garden is very easy as one of the main subway and train stations of the city is right underneath the building. You theoretically don’t have to go outside if you take public transit to and from the game.
TD Garden is a conventional building that follows the footprint of so many others during the 90s arena boom. It’s been kept up well as it approaches its 30th birthday and it doesn’t feel as old as it is. That said it doesn’t have the wow factor that some of the newer rinks of the NHL have that I’ve visited as of this writing. Boston was my 5th of the NHL original 6 teams that I’ve seen play at home (NYR is the only one missing) and I felt it had the least amount of history on display. Don’t get me wrong there is history. A fantastic diving Bobby Orr statue out front and the rafters are dotted with the team’s success. But as I walked the concourse it felt like I could be in any NHL rink hosted by any team if not for the Bruins stores. Since going, I have discovered there is a bit of a museum tucked away near the main entrance that I totally missed, so my bad there.
Entering the bowl, you find the usual two bowl setup of about 18,000 seats with a couple levels of suites in between. The sightlines are all solid and there are thankfully no obstructed views from hanging press boxes or suites. I found my seats in the upper bowl were a tad tighter than I’ve normally had across the NHL, but I am also a large man so your experience with that may be better. I found the A/V production in Boston was kind of bare bones, again for a team with such a great history they didn’t exactly show it off all that much in the pre-game hype package like they do in other places. I will say the crowd had a decent atmosphere. Far from the best I’ve seen in the NHL but also far from the worst.
My entire experience in Boston felt very middle of the road. Nothing about the TD Garden is bad. I can’t think of one thing about my experience that was poor. On the flip side I can’t think of too much that stood out as excellent either. There’s not much else to say about it beyond that and I can’t see myself making a point of doing a Bruins game again, unless I went with my dad who is a big Bruins fan.
