The Buffalo Sabres call the KeyBank Center home, but it did not always go by this name. Previously the arena was known as the Marine Midland Arena, HSBC Arena, and the First Niagara Center as well. Despite the name change, the location has stayed the same of course and it is beautifully located right on the edge of Lake Erie. This makes for a great view whenever you enter and exit the stadium no matter what time of day it is.
Table of Contents
Arena Guide by Ice Hockey Tripper
History
Just like many other NHL arenas, construction began in 1994 and the arena first opened in 1996. It cost $128 million dollars at the time which is still only just over two hundred million dollars in today’s money. This may seem like a lot of money, but when it comes to building a stadium it is actually relatively on the cheap side of things.
What makes the arena’s history unique is that the first JumboTron of the arena actually fell to the ice just after a Sabres practice had concluded and right before their game later that evening. Luckily nobody was on the ice so nobody was injured, but it could have been a lot worse. That game was postponed of course to clean up the mess and for the remainder of the season there was no scoreboard at all. Now we did mention that it was cheap initially, but there have been a lot of renovations that have taken place since the arena first opened. There have been a total of seven different renovations that have occurred each with their own unique fixes. These seem to be bandaids and updates that were lacking when the arena was originally made, but that is certainly one way to build an arena. Although that is not really our area of expertise, so we will just leave the renovations and history to those guys and gals.