Wildcat Den

Whittemore Center

Location: Durham, New Hampshire
Opened: 1995
Seating Capacity: 6501

The next arena I will be reflecting on in my blog is the Whittemore Center, which is home to the University of New Hampshire Wildcats.

We played the Wildcats on a Saturday night following a game against the Merrimack Warriors on Friday. Both Merrimack and the University of New Hampshire play in the Hockey East NCAA conference. As I have mentioned in many of my other blogs, it is always exciting playing in venues that are outside of the Atlantic Hockey conference.

The Whittemore Center is an enormous arena. The venue can seat over 6500 screaming fans. The building hosts New Hampshire's men's and women's hockey and basketball games along with various concerts and shows. When we played the Wildcats, I would estimate that there were roughly 1500 fans in the building which was pretty impressive since we do not play in the same conference as them. The student section was rowdy which always makes the environment fun to play in. The student section printed out "player biographies" on a handful of our team's players with fun facts that were fake and comical.

The ice surface is a massive; it has international hockey dimensions which means it is 15 feet wider than NHL ice rinks. While 15 feet may seem insignificant, it has a tremendous impact on the way the game is played. Large ice surfaces benefits benefit teams with smaller and faster players which was evident in New Hampshire's lineup. They were probably the smallest college hockey team that I have played against. There were many players who were well-under 6'0" tall, which is uncommon in college hockey.

The boards and glass were similar to Ohio State's in which the glass is extremely forgiving and the boards are lively which facilitates the fast pace of play. It became very tiresome chasing their smaller players around the humongous ice service. The corners in international rinks are much deeper and it allows for more plays to develop in the offensive zones. I play center and it is more difficult playing in the defensive zone on such a big ice surface.

The arena is located on New Hampshire's campus. Although we did not spend much time on the campus, it appeared to be a very lively and engaging campus with many students walking around. The Wildcats also had great support from their student body as I hinted at earlier. They were lively in the student section and there was chaos in the arena when New Hampshire scored.

I definitely enjoyed playing at the Whittemore Center in New Hampshire. I loved the atmosphere from the crowd and the arena itself is a beautiful venue; however, I was not a huge fan of the long bus ride to and from New Hampshire though.

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- Joshua