About the OHL Arena Guide

About the OHL Arena Guide

Completing the OHL in Ottawa in 2005, the QMJHL in Sherbrooke in 2022, and the WHL in Tri-City in 2024.

I launched the OHL Arena Guide in the fall of 2003. I had started going on road trips to OHL games in the 2002-03 season, and by season's end I had hit seven of the 20 OHL arenas - a respectable total for one year, and particularly when at that time I didn't own a car. Throughout that first season, making an OHL road trip was hard. Many of the teams did not list ticket prices, an address, or directions to their arenas on their websites, and finding my way to road games was occasionally a challenge. There were constant posts on the OHL message board I frequented asking for directions or advice seeing your team on the road. Moreover, there were no clear pictures on the entire internet of many OHL buildings, so if you wanted to know what, say, the Yardmen Arena looked like, there was no simple way to find out.

I realized that there was a need out there for a one-stop travel guide to the OHL. I'd seen visiting fans in London since I was a child, and they all had managed to find their way to our building without any obvious issues, but I still thought there was a niche out there that the early Internet 1.0 of the day wasn't fulfilling. Plus, I wanted to read an OHL Arena Guide website, and since no one else had taken up that baton, I thought I may as well do it!

I also wanted to show off the history of arenas in Ontario, and to tell the story of the OHL through the buildings where its games were played over the years. I made a point of trying to visit every former arena or arena site since the league began in 1933, and while I cannot be certain to have visited all of them given that there are no OHL gamesheets online dating from before 1997, to the best of my knowledge every one is chronicled here, including a handful that have since been demolished. The Oshawa Civic Auditorium and Guelph Memorial Gardens and Sault Memorial Gardens may no longer exist, but they have been preserved online here.

In the fall of 2005 I relocated for graduate school to St. John's, Newfoundland, and spent a year there cheering for the nascent Fog Devils. By the time I left Atlantic Canada, I'd been to games at five QMJHL buildings, and I launched the QMJHL site in 2007 to chronicle my travels through the Q. The comparatively high cost of air travel within Canada back then prevented me from really exploring the WHL until the fall of 2019, but after having finished the O and Q I finally launched the WHL site in the fall of 2022.

The internet has evolved since 2003, and most of the travel guide functions of the website were no longer needed by the time I finally gave the site a long-overdue overhaul and mobile upgrade in 2019. Google Maps, Street View and Wikipedia do a better job at directions and general information than I ever did, but I still wanted to keep this site up and running as a chronicle of my travels throughout the CHL. I'm Kevin Jordan, I'm a Londoner and a London Knights fan, and I've been going to Knights games since the fall of 1987. On October 28, 2024, I became the first person never employed in hockey to visit all 60 current CHL arenas. Feedback is welcomed by emailing me at email

, or follow me on Twitter @ohlarenaguide.

Current CHL Rink Total: 60/60 (79 total)
Listed by order of first visit.

X-closed venue

Memorial Cups Attended: 2005, 2008, 2014, 2017, 2024

A word on arena names: Sponsored arena names are stupid, and I'm not getting any money to refer to these buildings by their corporate monikers. In each case above, if the arena has ever had a non-corporate name during its CHL tenure, that is the name by which I refer to it. If the arena has always had a corporate name, it is referred to by its current name.

A word on what counts as a game, and as an arena: I have attempted to chronicle and vist every arena ever used by the CHL in a regular-season or playoff game. I never saw the Junior Red Wings play at Joe Louis Arena, but I saw the "OHL at the Joe" regular season game there between Windsor and Saginaw in 2016, and so that counts even as a one-off. But there are many, many other places where teams have played preseason games, and given that those games are meaningless and information would be impossible to come across, I haven't even tried to visit or chronicle all those places. For what it's worth, the only additional rink I'd add to my total if preseason were included is the Woodstock District Community Centre.

There have also been several outdoor games played in the CHL over the years, and I have not chronicled those stadiums either, because stadiums are not arenas. For what it's worth I have never been to an outdoor game, because if we were meant to sit outside in the winter they wouldn't have made it so cold out.

Here's the rest of my sports venue list:

NHL Arenas Visited (34 all-time, 27/32 current): Joe Louis Arena, Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, Maple Leaf Gardens, HSBC Arena, Brendan Byrne Arena, Nationwide Arena, Air Canada Centre, Pittsburgh Civic Arena, United Center, Bell Centre, St. Pete Times Forum, Scotiabank Place, Scottrade Center, BankAtlantic Center, Verizon Center, Bridgestone Arena, Nassau Coliseum, Madison Square Garden, Prudential Center, Consol Energy Center, PNC Arena, Glendale Arena, Pepsi Center, Wells Fargo Center, American Airlines Center, TD Garden, Bell MTS Place, Scotiabank Saddledome, Rogers Place, Little Caesars Arena, Rogers Arena, UBS Arena, Xcel Energy Center, Climate Pledge Arena. Missing ANH, LA, SJ, UTA, VGK.

AHL Arenas Visited (14 all-time, 12/32 current): Colisée de Québec, Copps Coliseum, RICOH Coliseum, Rosemont Horizon, Rochester War Memorial, Van Andel Arena, Gund Arena, Hartford Civic Center, Yardmen Arena, Utica Memorial Auditorium, Onondaga County War Memorial, Place Bell, Mecca, Rockford MetroCentre.

ECHL Arenas Visited: Huntington Center, Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, Riverfront Coliseum, Indiana State Fair Coliseum, Wings Stadium, Wheeling Civic Center.

NCAA Arenas Visited: Yost Arena, Munn Arena, BGSU Ice Arena.

U Sports Arenas Visited: Thompson Arena, John Labatt Centre.

ICEHL Arenas Visited: Albert Schultz Eishalle, Heidi Horten Arena, Eisstadion Liebenau.

Czech Extraliga Arenas Visited: Zimní Stadion Olomouc.

Major League Ballparks Visited (35 all-time, 30/30 current): SkyDome, Tiger Stadium, Comerica Park, Olympic Stadium, Fenway Park, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium I, Jacobs Field, Comiskey Park II, Wrigley Field, Great American Ballpark, PNC Park, Citizens Bank Park, Oakland Coliseum, AT&T Park, Miller Park, Nationals Park, Camden Yards, Busch Stadium (current), Kauffman Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Petco Park, Anaheim Stadium, Safeco Field, Yankee Stadium II, Citi Field, Chase Field, Turner Field, Target Field, Marlins Park, Tropicana Field, Truist Park, Enron Field, Globe Life Field.

Minor League Ballparks Visited: International League 'AAA' baseball: Sahlen Field (BUF), Fifth Third Field (TOL), Frontier Field (ROC), PNC Field (WBS), NBT Bank Stadium (SYR), Huntington Park (COL); Eastern League 'AA' baseball: Labatt Park; Frontier League baseball: Labatt Park, Emslie Field; Northern League baseball: CanWest Global Park.

Soccer Grounds Visited: England: Goodison Park, London Stadium, Plough Lane; Germany: Berlin Olympiastadion; MLS: BMO Field, RFK Stadium, Crew Stadium, Red Bull Arena, PPL Park, BC Place, TQL Stadium; Oman: Al-Saada Stadium.

NFL: Pontiac Silverdome.

Road/Street Circuits: F1: Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Bahrain International Circuit; Sports Cars: Mosport Park, Streets of Belle Isle, Circuit of the Americas, Lime Rock Park; IndyCar: Watkins Glen International, Streets of Toronto, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Streets of Belle Isle, Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Grand Prix Circuit), Road America. I also have driven four touristenfahrten laps in a Renault Clio at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany, though I did not watch a race there.

Oval Race Tracks: Indycar: Michigan International Speedway; Stock Cars: Delaware Speedway Park, Cayuga Speedway, Ohsweken Speedway, Flamboro Speedway, Sunset Speedway, Southern Ontario Motor Speedway, Merrittville Speedway, Sauble Speedway, Peterborough Speedway, Varney International Speedway, Humberstone Speedway, Flat Rock Speedway.

About Me: I have lived in London, Ontario since birth, apart from one wonderful year spent living in St. John's, Newfoundland. I work as a program officer in government, I'm happily married and have no children. I enjoy non-sports related travel as well, and I have been to every Canadian province, 47/50 U.S. states, and 18 other countries (England, Mexico, Honduras, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain). My other hobbies are cooking, photography, watchmaking, I play the guitar, bass and saxophone, and I enjoy doing renovation and historical restoration work on my heritage home.

I Support: London Knights, Everton FC, Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Blue Jays, Williams F1

Thank You: To everyone past and present with whom I've been on a hockey road trip, especially Chris Beach and Steve McLean, but also the late R.J. Beaumont, Adam & Nick Bruckschwaiger, Chris Clark, Ben Dykens, Peter Farrell, Matt Gallien, Tyler Hetherington, Jason Hodgson, Craig Howlett, Sebastian Jackson, Trevor Jones, Andrew Kulyk, Eric Lande, Drew Lewis, Ryan Macdonald, Rob Matic, Jamie McGhee, Patrick McNeill, Jewel MacDonald, Andy Ritter, Neate Sager, Joe Tasca, and Brian Thompson. Thank you to everyone who's ever made a contribution to this website, regardless of whether or not it was ever used. Special thanks to my Dad, for introducing me to junior hockey in the first place, and to my wife Julie.

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