Basé sur l’emplacement, les commodités, l’atmosphère et l’abordabilité.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6990216/2026/01/29/nhl-rink-rankings-home-arenas/
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BearMinute1038
@Capitals de Washington
Basé sur l’emplacement, les commodités, l’atmosphère et l’abordabilité.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6990216/2026/01/29/nhl-rink-rankings-home-arenas/
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BearMinute1038
27 Comments
Location is fine. In-game atmosphere and ticket prices are ass.
Nothing special about it, bland as can be
it would be great if the renovations improved upon this, but I doubt it.
The ice is crap and you get weird bounces all the time. I think the players rank it lower
I’ve been to most of the NHL arenas in the last 3-4 years and that ranking seems fair. They do the bare minimum and actively are making the fan experience worse with absurd concessions pricing and amount of noise. As a DC resident, the volume from the speakers is enough to make me not go to games, no matter how desperate I am to watch Ethen zoom. No other arena I’ve been to has been nearly as loud when absolutely nothing is happening.
Been to wells Fargo, bell centre and MSG. Cap one does not compare.
All three we nice, great concessions and decent facilities. Cap one has a nice main concourse for 100 and 200, but the experience does shift quite a bit for the rest of the us 😅
100%. I’ve been to Toronto, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Columbus, Carolina, Vegas, Arizona, Chicago, and the Colosseum. All but Arizona eclipsed the Verizon Center for a game day experience.
They’ve sanitized the event and made as boring as possible. There’s no excitement anymore. There’s nothing that makes it feel like home. It’s a sterile corporate environment that even Maple Leafs fans would say “WTF” at. But DC isn’t a sports town, it’s an event town. People want to see and be seen at the most important things happening, it doesn’t matter if it’s hockey, baseball, or a concert at DAR. It’s whatever is hot at the time.
Not sure I care too much about writers’ input on this one. Why would I care what snacks they have the press box?
Yes, my dad was one of the engineers on the project, not much changed between 1998 and 2016, then they tried different stuff to make it look more modern on the interior and it sucked. Been a STH since 2014 and my prices keep going up, but nothing has improved. I used to like having coffee near my section when Dunkins was there and then the Ted’s knockoff. Now it’s a boozy NOLA themed drink place and it’s genuinely the dumbest thing in the winter. They used to have poutine at the stadium, a hockey staple, and that’s gone. They used to have local and good things, and now it’s overpriced trash. The Caps at one point had a season ticket holder advisory board and Ted got rid of that. The ownership group tries to act like the Caps are at the level of a Canadian or O6 franchise, when they’re genuinely a mid-market team. The NFL team has always been treated as the predominant franchise of the city and their fans. Premium seating for the Wizards is cheaper than the Caps regular season tickets. My buddy has 200 level tickets for the Wiz and pays less than $80. It’s an absolute joke how Ted tries to price gouge Caps fans compared to Wizards fans
i cant afford to go any more and they removed monumental from youtube tv so i could care less.
Never liked anything about the venue from day 1. Throw in parking, ticket prices, neighborhood, and the surrounding boring bars and restaurants, it’s a hard pass. Then you look at the fans. Half are glued to their phones. Last game I went to had 4 or 5 college age kids directly in front of us. They were sharing and watching videos and talking about everything but the game the entire match. When either team scored several would look up and ask what happened. Finally a guy behind me shouted out « maybe if you were watching the game you would know ». Didn’t miss a beat. Right back to their videos.
Seems like we would have been higher before the Vault came to be. Agree about the food but not the fans!
« But the fans are very down on their home rink, which scored poorly in every category except location. »
This quote says it all.
Was traveling and sat a row off glass for preds at sabres last year. Had a great time, good arena felt about as old as DC. Ended up being a great game, with a Buffalo OT win. The whole experience felt like they were trying to rob me a lot less than DC. Free trolly to/from, better cheaper concessions, wayyyy cheaper seats(under $100). I wish DC could figure it out that maximum profit hurts fan experience.
It’s nothing special and the new Vault seats are an abomination. The concessions are quite poor from a food quality, service and cost perspective.
Generous ranking, especially with the vault seating making half the lower bowl seem completely empty.
I concur with this rating. Once you go to a place like MSG it’s hard to go back to Cap One. Even T-mobile arena has a better atmosphere, they were louder for a random mid season game than Cap One during the playoffs. It’s the same for baseball, I went to Nationals games growing up and then I went to Yankees stadium and was like,”oh so this is what it’s supposed to be like.”
Every issue with Cap One is a self inflicted wound. The location is excellent.
I don’t agree with this list. Bell Centre at the top makes sense. But I’ve been to a Devils game at the rock, having that above CapOne is bonkers. I also liked ScotiaBank arena and I love going to TD Garden. But maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on things to do before/after the game, parking, etc.
Last game I attended, I tried to count the number of times they instructed us to ‘make some noise’ and I lost count. Will try to remember to do it all the way through next week.
It’s fucking exhausting
Capone has the appeal and atmosphere of Charlotte airport terminal.
I enjoy going to Caps games a lot. The location is fine, I enjoy the atmosphere, but it’s hard to argue with this ranking when you consider affordability and amenities. I can get train tickets to Prudential Center, a hotel, and tickets to a game for the price of just a pair of tickets at CapOne. In addition, the food/beverage pricing is offensive, even by arena standards.
It’s like most rankings the media kicks out. Mostly opinion with a sprinkle of critical thinking (affordability and location). They are the Cheetos of content for editors – Cheap, fake, fast, filler, that are addictive to the consumer.
In reality, there’s 2 groups of arenas.
– A handful of arenas that stand out from age, be it retaining legacy (Bell Centre, MSG, etc) or new with all the bells and whistles (T-Mobile, Climate Pledge, etc) or both (Little Caesars).
– Then there’s the rest. I won’t include Cap One for bias. I’ll use 3 other arenas on the list I’ve been to for NHL games: Prudential, American Airlines, and Enterprise. They were all generally the same. In-game entertainment was the same just swap team names and colors.
Hell, go look at the fan quotes for ‘the rest’ you’ll see a theme: Overpriced food and drink, too loud, and depends on if the team is good.
It’s the least personal most cash-grabby stadium I’ve been to.
The arena is bland in itself, but I love where it’s located in DC right next to Chinatown is very cool and lots of cool galleries you can hit before you go into the arena… so that’s a big plus, National Gallery and Portrait gallery walking distance
I used to regularly go to games until I moved away. The atmosphere used to be great and the location was about as good as you could hope for in the city. When I returned a few seasons ago I was surprised about how much worse the game day experience seemed – everything from pricing on concessions to the atmosphere itself.
I can’t help but wonder if Ted is being vindictive about not being able to move to Alexandria like he wanted.
The mid-late 2000’s at Capital One (Verizon Center) were the loudest I’ve ever heard that building. Back when fans weren’t priced out, we had exciting teams every season, and the schedule was built perfectly for rivalry matchups on home ice.