Greg Scott noticed a big difference between the ShoWare Center and KeyArena as soon as he arrived to play for the Seattle Thunderbirds in their debut Saturday night at the city of Kent\u2019s new facility.<\/p>\n
“We pulled up to the rink and there was a buzz around the rink,” said Scott, a left wing in his fourth season with the team. “There were no parking spots at about 4:45 at the main lot. It was way different than the KeyArena vibe.”<\/p>\n
The T-birds beat the Everett Silvertips 4-3 before a sold-out crowd of 6,125 in their inaugural game at the ShoWare Center. The T-birds moved to Kent from the KeyArena in Seattle.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s crazy what we just witnessed,” said Scott after the game. “I love it. I think everyone was excited. Every single guy on our team was excited. It was a great day.”<\/p>\n
T-Bird players were thrilled with the $84.5 million arena, their new home ice.<\/p>\n
“It was unreal,” said T-bird center Brenden Silvester, who scored the first goal at the ShoWare Center. “It\u2019s a great facility. It looked a lot better than the Key, which looks a little empty. Being in this rink, it\u2019s more packed and more loud.”<\/p>\n
The T-bird players entered the ice through a ring of fire during player introductions, with an onslaught of cheering from the fans.<\/p>\n
“Those flames were hot,” Silvester said.<\/p>\n
Players were pumped to play in front of a sold-out crowd.<\/p>\n
“I can\u2019t tell you how great of an arena this is,” Scott said. “The atmosphere was the best I\u2019ve been in for a while. We fed off the fans\u2019 energy, and they fed off of ours.”<\/p>\n
The intimacy of the ShoWare Center – which is a smaller venue than KeyArena – proved to be a big positive for the players.<\/p>\n
“The Key\u2019s always been a little bit rowdy,” Silvester said. “But out here, it\u2019s nice and compact and everything\u2019s great. It\u2019s perfect.”<\/p>\n
T-bird coach Rob Sumner expects the team\u2019s new home could help his players win more games.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s an advantage because we saw it tonight,” Sumner said. “There\u2019s a heck of an atmosphere out there. We\u2019re excited to play here. But just because you\u2019re playing at home doesn\u2019t mean it gets easier. There\u2019s the advantage of the crowd, but we still have play the games, and play to win.”<\/p>\n
Players were excited even before the game to carve up the ice at their new home.<\/p>\n
“The whole dressing room, everybody had smile on their faces,” Scott said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Greg Scott noticed a big difference between the ShoWare Center and KeyArena as soon as he arrived to play for the Seattle Thunderbirds in their debut Saturday night at the city of Kent\u2019s new facility. “We pulled up to the rink and there was a buzz around the rink,” said Scott, a left wing in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":2715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}