The WHL Arena Guide - Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle Thunderbirds

First Visit: October 24, 2024 for NHL

When the Seattle Kraken began play in 2021, their home arena was in some ways both the oldest and the newest in the NHL. Climate Pledge Arena, as it’s now hilariously known, exists under the same heritage-designated roof as the former Key Arena, which itself was a significantly-renovated upgrade from 1962’s Seattle Center Coliseum, originally built for the World’s Fair of that same year.

It was the previous two iterations of the arena that hosted both the NBA’s Supersonics and the WHL’s Thunderbirds. The T-birds moved down the street from the ancient Mercer Arena in 1989, making the Coliseum their permanent home, and then moved out in 2009 when the new ShoWare Center opened in suburban Kent. For those twenty years, the Thunderbirds joined the Hitmen, Oil Kings, Giants, Hamilton Bulldogs, Montreal Rocket, and other junior teams playing in NHL-sized arenas, usually with the upper deck curtained-off. The Thunderbirds often drew well in Seattle Center, but still were yet another junior team playing in a cavernous arena that was too big for junior hockey.

From photos, it appears that the Key Arena was poorly-suited to hockey anyway. The building was designed for the NBA first and foremost, which meant that one end of seats had to be removed in order to fit the ice surface in, like America West Arena in Phoenix or the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. The center scoreboard was off-centre for hockey as well, hanging roughly over the blue line in one end, and from what I’ve heard atmosphere was poor apart from the biggest games.

Key Arena was demolished from the roof down in anticipation of the arrival of the Kraken, and the current arena is entirely new under the historic old roof superstructure. In fact, the new arena is almost entirely underground, with ground level entry being into the upper deck concourse, and access to the ice level involving going down a set of escalators. I saw a Kraken game there in 2024, and the rink is now quite excellent for hockey, with the roof structure forcing oddball design choices in the layout of the rink that makes it unique. In a world of clone rinks, unique is always a good thing.

The Thunderbirds still play one game a year at Climate Pledge Arena, which technically makes this still a current WHL rink, but it is as a home to the NHL that the arena stands today.