What TD Place Arena meant to the Ottawa Charge over the last three seasons

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Debris from the ceiling routinely floats down onto the ice, including during the team’s picture day when staff scrambled to find shovels before the photo could be taken.

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Ceiling leaks were a near-daily occurrence, and one particularly persistent drip even treated this reporter to an unexpected mid-game shower at the media table between periods.

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Puck drop was delayed by an hour during a March 4 game due to an “ice malfunction,” after a carpet rolled out onto the surface during pre-game ceremonies became stuck, tearing a hole two centimetres deep into the ice.

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And the quirks weren’t just part of the fan experience. Players felt them, too.

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“It’s such a special place for us to call home and a hard place for visitors to come play in with its uniqueness, whether it’s the structure of the stands or its unique bounces that we didn’t even always know were going to happen,” Clark said.

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A player poll conducted by the Athletic at the beginning of last season revealed that TD Place was voted by players as the second-least popular primary venue in the league behind new York’s Prudential Center, with most citing the sharp-angled corners and stiff boards as major drawbacks.

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“The boards (at TD Place) are also pretty loud, and one hit, you hear all the way to Europe,” defender Ronja Savolainen joked at the end-of-season availability.

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Many of these deficiencies were outlined in the City of Ottawa’s 2019 obsolescence report as part of the reason why the structure functions at levels “well below contemporary standards,” with issues such as ongoing leaks unable to be permanently repaired.

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The Charge certainly deserves a venue upgrade where ceiling debris and haphazard leaks are no longer on the game-day bingo cards, but this upgrade needed to take into account that the team averaged 8,131 fans at home during the regular season.

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So, when the City of Ottawa approved the $419 million Lansdowne 2.0 project, which includes an event centre with 3,000 seats fewer than TD Place Arena currently holds, the league was forced to look elsewhere.

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“These women have worked too hard to get to the point today where a 5,500-seat building is well below what we average in Ottawa, so we will not play at Lansdowne 2.0 — that’s the one option not on the table,” Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice-president of business operations, said in a November availability.

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It’ll certainly be a big change for the Charge athletes who have built their lives in Ottawa with TD Place at the epicentre, with many living in the surrounding Glebe neighbourhood and becoming regulars at the local coffee shops and restaurants.

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As the team found out during the playoffs, the move to a venue 25 kilometres west means trading walks to the rink for a 20-minute drive, on a good day with no traffic.

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“The drive wasn’t fun, but I mean, I didn’t drive there,” Savolainen said. “(Katerina Mrazova) was a great Uber driver, so I was enjoying it.”

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And not only did the players build their lives around TD Place Arena, but the fans did, too. Before or after every game, Charge jerseys became a feature in every bar and restaurant as fans built a community around the arena’s central Lansdowne location.

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Fans who rely on active or public transportation were able to get to the games with relative ease, a privilege they weren’t otherwise offered if they wanted to watch a Senators game in Kanata.

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“I know it was on the older end of things, but there’s something to be said about being able to play in the core of a city in a historic building that isn’t overwhelmed by sponsorships and ads and bright lighting and all these things,” said Britt Hurley, a season-ticket holder since the inaugural season.