Cape Breton Eagles
Rink: Centre 200
Capacity: 4,670
Built: 1987
League: QMJHL
City: Sydney, Nova Scotia
Home Of: Cape Breton Eagles
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: October 20, 2023 vs Val d’Or
Unique Arena: #69
QMJHL Arena: #18
It’s not often that exterior arena shots have a Tim Horton’s drive thru in the foreground, but that’s the setup in Sydney with Centre 200. The rink itself sits in behind a Tim Horton’s in the downtown area and also has a casino attached to it. The rink and casino have a lobby that sits in between, which is the main entrance of the rink. Once past the team store and through the ticket doors you enter a giant atrium with plenty of concession stands and a large area where most people gather during intermissions, which leaves the concourse around the bowl itself one of the lesser used ones in the CHL.
The first thing one notices about the inside of Centre 200 is the huge “upper deck” of seats that sit on just one side of the rink. It makes the building seem pretty large, so it’s hard to believe it has a capacity a bit south of 5,000. On the big side there is a concourse that runs beneath with a concession stand, but it is hardly used. Most people use the path that sits between the lower and upper sections to navigate the seating bowl, as this path goes all the way around the top of the other three sides of the rink.
While the seats aren’t exactly team colours, the team makes up for it by having Eagles logos and signs splashed all through the arena and on the outside of it as well. Some teams in the CHL have arenas where you would be hard pressed to figure out who plays there if not for a centre ice logo and team store. This isn’t an issue in Sydney as the rink definitely feels like the home of the Eagles. The seats are comfortable, and the views of the ice are all generally good unless you sit at the very top of the upper deck, there you will have a bit of an obstructed view of the scoreboard. In all honesty the scoreboard needs replacing as there were glitched out spots all over the video board. It’s functional, but it feels pretty old in an area where most teams have gone digital. Bonus points for the 1993 Calder Cup championship banner still being on display when the building was home to the AHL’s Cape Breton Oilers back in the day.
Centre 200 is not exactly a building that’s going to blow you away. It’s not new and impressive, but it’s not a super old barn with charm and atmosphere. But it is a perfectly functional building that should be part of the league for a long time to come. Honestly the biggest problem in Cape Breton is the lack of atmosphere. The building was barely a quarter full for the game I attended, and from what I’ve been told that’s the norm these days in Sydney. The team is now over a quarter century old and has very little team success to show for it, and people seemed to have checked out. Here’s hoping with some on ice success the team can get the crowds to come out and make Centre 200 a more intimidating place to play in the future.
