“You’re playing worse everyday and right now you’re playing like it’s next month.”    – Herb Brooks

Arena: Xcel Energy Center (2000)
Location: Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota
Game Attended: March 16, 2019 vs. New York Rangers
Seat Location: Upstairs Corner, Shoot 1x End
Game Result: 5-2 Wild Victory
Overall Impression: A Nice Minnesota Hockey Museum

Sometimes it’s just better to be lucky than good, because with our luck, the scheduling of our hockey trip permitted us to spend St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Minnesota. So college friend Drew and I traveled to St. Paul amongst hundreds of festive patrons, green outfits and frothy beverages in hand, to enjoy all that the city’s social life had to offer. St. Paul’s 7th Street bars and restaurants provided plenty of pre-game food and drink options within close proximity of the arena. Also made for INCREDIBLE people watching. Erin Go Bragh!

As the day wore on, more and more Wild (and even old school North Stars) jerseys popped up around town, in anticipation of a Saturday night game for the Wild. There were great crowds and great establishments all over the small city of St. Paul, and we had a very enjoyable, yet exhausting, day. Despite being a small city (only about 200,000 people live there), St. Paul is a fun place to enjoy a game.

Now on to the hockey: Minnesota bills itself as the State of Hockey, and Xcel Energy Center makes it easy to see why. The building pretty much moonlights as a Minnesota hockey museum, with tons of displays. Everything from local jerseys (similar to several other arenas) to Minnesota hockey history banners to a display honoring state high school champions. Pretty neat to see the Wild embrace the hockey community as a whole!

The arena also resembled some aspects of a wilderness lodge, with log cabin-like materials used in signage and concession stands. Certain parts of the building felt you were in a remote resort specifically designed for hockey players. Pretty neat and unique, but some areas felt pretty dark.

The interior of the rink looked fairly standard, though our seats in the upper deck did feel pretty high up and somewhat distant. The four corners of the rink have circular pillars with electronic scoreboards to keep scores and stats from the game. A nice feature, but made the upper deck feel fragmented and sections somewhat isolated from the rest of the fans.

I think my overall impression of Minnesota and the Xcel Energy Center is one of “it’s good but not great”. About the whole experience: the team, the city of St. Paul, the building itself, even the crowd. While noticeably louder than a few of the Canadian cities we visited earlier in the week, perhaps I was expecting more from “diehard hockey fans”. Nevertheless, good is still good, and without a doubt, the State of Hockey is strong in Minnesota!

Building: 3.5 / 5

Atmosphere: 3.5 / 5

Neighborhood: 4 / 5

Overall: 4 / 5