If you’re asking what are the most important things when it comes to players’ desires in a new arena, there are two things that come to mind first and foremost from listening to various hockey podcasts and such over the years: the locker room and the spouse area. First, with the locker room, no player wants to come to a home game and have a worse locker room then they would have on the road sometimes. You’ve gotta get the space age locker stalls, something similar to the Oregon football locker room, or you have to go aggressively classic with the dark wood, tons of space for each player, and a nice open area in the middle for the team logo on the ground. With the spouses space, it’s come up more often than you might expect that this is something that is mentioned a lot when it comes to things that players care about. Childcare so the spouses can enjoy the game when they’re coming to them, amenities like private entrances and nice food, all these things go a long way. And as the old saying goes, happy wife happy life. Of course for the SHL it would have be something like happy spouse happy… I don’t know, someone smarter than me can find s good rhyming word here.

WC: 220