Watching hockey live rules. Out of all the major pro sports, it's the one that gains the most from seeing it in person rather than watching it on TV.
So the addition of the Seattle Kraken to the Washington sports scene this year is inarguably a boon. Having NHL hockey a mere four-hour drive away makes hopping over the Cascades for a game a realistic day or weekend trip for curious sports fans.
But is Kraken hockey worth the journey?
I drove over for a December showdown with the Edmonton Oilers to find out.
Climate Pledge Arena is... strange.
While called a "renovation" of Seattle Center's famed KeyArena, they essentially built a brand new $1.15 billion-dollar complex beneath the old roof.
The money spent shows up in the most crucial area possible: sightlines. There does not appear to be a single bad seat to watch a hockey game. I ventured to the highest corner nosebleed seats to check out the vantage point, and even those offered very good views. While the puck is in play, it's tough to find fault with the new confines. It's just the rest of the time when things feel off.
Amazon purchased the sanctimonious naming rights for the building, and the arena vibe has all the fingerprints of how Amazon has transformed Seattle for the worse over the past decade.
It's the posh bar levels that are visible — but inaccessible — for average fans. It's the narrow concrete walkways and the difficulty in being able to find stairs, which seem designed by an algorithm, not humans. It's the walls with greenery growing on them juxtaposed with energy-draining LED screen entryways. It's calling the two scoreboards "The Twins," which sounds Coors Light ad cringy. Most unsettling and anti-true Seattle of all, it's how the goal celebration music is Nirvana's "Lithium," but with Kurt Cobain's vocals posthumously chopped up to turn "I'm not gonna crack" into "Let's go Kraken." Yikes.
There's also a weird element of pseudo-gaslighting that occurs throughout the game by the in-arena hosts. The amount of times they said the exact phrase: "Climate Pledge Arena, the world's most beautiful and sustainable arena" started to make me queasy. Calling this character-free slab of concrete "beautiful" is an outright lie. Perhaps even more absurd was the repeated claim that Kraken fans are the "loudest in the NHL." I believe this is a false attempt to co-opt the famed loudness of Seahawks fans, but it's hilariously false.
And that's actually the point that makes me most hesitant to recommend making the road trip: Kraken games just lack fan energy at this point.
Once the puck drops, it's pretty dead. I don't blame the fans, really. The Kraken have the undeniable task of building a fan base where hockey isn't embedded in the culture. And the team basically eliminating itself from the playoff hunt by mid-November ruined any chance of gaining the first-year bandwagon fans.
There were only two organic "Let's go Kraken" chants, and the crowd really didn't make much noise until the final minute, when the Kraken valiantly fended off a 6-on-4 advantage to secure a 4-3 win. For comparison, the next day in Climate Pledge, Gonzaga basketball fans were roughly three times louder at tip-off than Kraken fans were when celebrating a W.
NHL action is great. The Kraken could be unleashed at some point. But for now, your best hockey option for fun, environment and cost remains staying home and cheering on the Spokane Chiefs. ♦
