#10

Bank Atlantic Center – Florida Panthers


Convenience/Access – Get in your car and drive to Sunrise for the treat of watching the Cats. Apparently only the Heat are worthy of Miami proper.


Location/Scene – There is clearly no room on South Beach, but somewhere a bit more connected to the nightlife and social scene down here would undoubtedly help. There is no scene that we saw in Sunrise, besides at the tiki/margarita bar that we ate at a few hundred yards from the parking lot. There are probably some good reasons to have the rink out here, more central to other areas than all the way south, but these are our rankings and we like rinks in cities.

Outside Appearance – Chock up another newish, glass and white concrete structure to the NHL landscape. Nice, but nothing otherworldly. Some funky Miami art deco architecture would have been cool.


Inner Aesthetics – More blandness. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t memorable or good. The seats are green, which is nothing if not different. The scoreboard and outer LED boards are on the hard to read side.

Concourse - Best feature of the arena, by far. One of the higher scores in any given category of any rink, actually. The inside of this place is clean, interesting, unique, and screams Miami. Among the highlights: CARPETING, curtains, salsa dancers, lots of neon. Our game was actually the highest-attended game in Panthers history, and the concourses were not suffocating.

Sightlines – Good. Our club level seats were excellent and while there are steeper setups, this place certainly affords pretty good views. To our discredit, we did not check out the upper level sets in any detail.

Concessions – Like all good newer rinks, you can get anything you want here. We don’t recall anything amazing us or jumping out as especially interesting, but the lines weren’t long and there were plenty of stands.

Fans/Atmosphere – We got a sweet game- Montreal and all of their snowbird fans in town on the day before New Years’ Eve. Made for a crowd vibe but we really cant give any credit here, because we all know that the usual scene is way worse, and even with the charged crowd, the overall atmosphere was bland anyway. The continued “tradition” of the “Panthers….Goal” fan response is cool.

History/Banners – The few actual accomplishment-related banners were fine. There were the obligatory, cheap and unnecessary banners of all 30 nhl teams, but there wasn’t any #1 fan or such nonsense. A push, we say.

Cool Stuff – For a team with very little history, the panthers acknowledge and display their tradition well. Lots of homages to the 96 team, rat displays, etc. The large banners proclaiming the various skill-sets of current panthers (our favorite: Mike Van Ryn – KNOWLEDGE, is above) were a riot.

Bars – At least 2 big, non-generic bars on the main level- one of which was a cool vodka/ice bar type thing. We partook.


Store – Great selection, albeit light on jerseys and player shirts that we noticed. High prices.

Value – Very good, at least for the club seats. This team needs cheap tickets.

Overall – A really clean and attractive arena with a very bland seating bowl and no atmosphere in or around the rink to speak of. Another rink whose ranking is influenced heavily by one “outlier” ranking (EP’s).