Montreal Canadiens
Rink: Centre Bell
Capacity: 21,105
Built: 1996
League: NHL
City: Montreal, Quebec
Home Of: Montreal Canadiens
Games Attended: 4
First Game: November 5, 2022 vs Vegas
Most Recent Game: November 1, 2025 vs Ottawa
Unique Arena: #60
NHL Arena: #6
The Bell Centre is a massive building in the heart of downtown Montreal, surrounded by other large buildings on all sides which makes it a bit tough to get a decent exterior shot of the place. The exterior as you can see makes it very clear this place is the home of the Habs, which is awesome to see. The shape of the building itself doesn’t scream hockey, and in a sentence that will be considered super sacrilegious to most feels a bit like the old Maple Leaf Gardens in that it’s a very tall intimating yet square building. I mean that with the upmost respect – please don’t kill me Habs fans.
Capacity-wise the Centre Bell is the largest in the NHL with north of 21,000 seats, and yet it feels intimate. Bell Centre was built during the 1990s arena boom and while it felt ultra-modern at the time, I would say by 2020s standards it would feel a bit old. An arena with this capacity today would dwarf the current building with extra social spaces and expanded bars and concessions to make it more of a hang out. While the concessions and bathrooms are all plentiful enough, the concourse is still designed in a way as a means to get you to your seat and little else. It’s cramped at intermissions and not exactly a great hangout spot. I say all of this in a positive light because while sitting up in the upper deck may give you feelings of vertigo, I still feel like Montreal is an intimate experience compared to a slightly more modern-day NHL.
Seats in the upper bowl (especially on the sides) can have some pretty obstructed views with the press facilities hanging down in front of them. The seats are also so steep that it felt like they really had to wedge them in to fit within the confines of the outer four walls.
My first three games in Montreal all took place in the span of twelve months and in all three games I sat in the upper bowl. Usually, I don’t mind upper bowl seats at NHL games as I am the type that loves a high view of the action and as long as you don’t have one of the obstructed view seats upstairs then that view in Montreal is great. However, for my fourth game here I had the chance to sit in the tenth row of the lower bowl. I can’t compare the lower bowl here to many others because the only other NHL rink I’ve sat in the lower bowl for an NHL game was in Buffalo once. Regardless I have to say the experience in the lower bowl in Montreal was fantastic. The lower bowl here is also very steep so sitting in the tenth row I was just high enough to still get a good view of the action while I looked almost straight up at the crowd of 21,000 on top of me making huge noise for a Saturday night rivalry game that the Habs won in OT. No matter where you sit in Montreal the atmosphere is amazing, easily the best I’ve come across in the NHL as of this writing having been to about half the league now.
It’s such a stark contrast to going to a Leafs game in Toronto with all the suits. The building is filled with hockey crazy people, and the game presentation is fantastic. I loved how the team played up that they aren’t part of the original six, they’re the original one, being the oldest of the current 32 NHL teams.
If you get the chance to go, do it, you won’t regret it.
