Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Regina has a team that needs a 33,000 seat stadium. Saskatoon doesn't have anything that needs more than about 12,000 seats. Quebec stood a realistic shot at landing a NHL team when it built Centre Videotron to NHL standards but that will not be in the cards for Saskatoon. So it will be interesting to see if Saskatoon goes big and builds a full-scale NHL arena even without any prospect of landing an actual NHL team.
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As has been previously mentioned, SaskTel expanded to 15,000 gradually instead of being built for the purpose to attract an NHL team, so a higher seat capacity for a new arena is still justified even if the NHL is not planning on coming there anytime soon. The original NHL relocation proposal called for an 18,000 seat stadium, which ultimately panned out to only 7,800 upon original construction after the Blues relocation plan died.
Even Regina is now considering a capacity of around 10,000 in its new arena, up from about 6,500 at Brandt. Moderately larger arena sizes are starting to get viable in our smaller cities.