Medicine Hat Tigers
Rink: Co-Op Place
Capacity: 7,100
Built: 2015
League: WHL
City: Medicine Hat, Alberta
Home Of: Medicine Hat Tigers
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: February 4, 2023 vs Lethbridge
Unique Arena: #63
WHL Arena: #10
Co-Op Place is everything the old Medicine Hat Arena wasn’t. Unfortunately, in most cases it’s a bad thing. Let’s start with the location. The rink is beyond the edge of town. It’s the junior equivalent of the Sens building in Kanata, and there is pretty much nothing around. It’s mostly surrounded by its parking lots and prairie land. The building has been open for nearly 8 years now and some things are popping up, but it mostly sits on its own on the northwestern fringes of The Hat. Good news, parking is free. Also looking at this place from the outside, it reminds me more of some sort of college campus or new high school than it does an arena.
Continuing with the theme that the new rink is everything the old one in Medicine Hat wasn’t, it’s big. Unfortunately, it’s just too big for the Tigers. The Tigers and their fans regularly sold out the old 4,000 seat arena, but now they have 7,100 seats to fill and in a town of less than 65,000 it’s just not doable on a regular basis. In fact, the building had its first sell out for a Tigers game in its history the day after this game, with Connor Bedard and the Pats in town. Most of the time you now get crowds like the one you see before you. The fans in attendance aren’t bad; they’re just spread out and sitting in a soulless, cavernous building.
Medicine Hat is a pretty standard clone rink except for the odd addition of an upper bowl in just the single end of the building. The seats up there are very steep and do offer a fantastic view of the ice, but the extra bowl means the roof has to be much higher for the entire building than it needs to be. I’m sure it’s great for concerts and other events, but it doesn’t do much to help the atmosphere for the Tigers when you have a giant unused section of the building like teams who play in NHL-sized rinks have.
I don’t want this entire thing to be just shitting on Co-Op Place so let’s talk about what’s good. As a fan it has all the amenities one could want with wide concourses, comfy enough seats, plenty of bathrooms and concessions. The staff are very friendly, as are the locals who welcomed us warmly. The problem is the building lacks soul. Not much about this building screams the home of the Tigers. Sure, they’ve got their countless banners in one end of the rink and their logo at centre ice, but beyond the team store the concourse has absolutely zero Tigers stuff on display. For a team with so much success in their history, more needs to be on display. Walls through the entire building are bare and there are no team colours to be found anywhere. It’s a shame that a franchise once known for one of the most soulful buildings in the entire CHL is now playing in front of indifference.
