Hockey Tampere got its own Madison Square Garden – this is what the Cover Arena looks like now

Four a crane extending to the ceiling takes over the trough of Tampere’s new Kanne arena. A giant jumbo screen lies on the surface of the field and builders are busy here and there.

It seems that the new arena built on the railroad tracks would still be badly underway, but the idea is wrong.

In a month’s time, two local matches between Tappara and Ilves will be played in the arena.

Tampere’s new arena is smaller than Madison Square Garden (MSG). In Manhattan, Penn Station’s train station is located below the MSG and the rails are moving in Tampere as well. You can no longer get to the center of this city.

It fits well that Mansen’s arena is like Madison in the Big West.

Although enough building space and work, property and security manager Jani Helenius assures that the puck will fall on the ice on time on December 3rd. Board piles, containers, cranes and other accessories are then gone.

Tampere has a strong waiting atmosphere. The locals hardly count to count the days of two consecutive sold-out local matches.

Many other hockey friends have marked the Tampere World Cup next calendar next spring.

Smoothing the whole is handsome. The understated, grayscale color scheme, modern structure, and broadly serving concept seem competent, even though the actual testing remains on the threshold of the first matches.

Below the central circle of the deck arena, the tracks of the Helsinki train and the train going to Jyväskylä intersect. During each match, some train sweeps below the trough either south or north.

Project is huge. The arena is just one part of it. There are hotels, offices and apartment buildings. And more will come as the site expands to the north in the future.

“The arena costs about 110-120 million euros and it looks like we will stick to it. The whole project is a different matter when it includes six different properties, ”says Helenius.

Ilves, Tappara and later the World Championships will have access to an arena with 62 fences, 12 of which are large group fences. In addition, the arena has a training hall and corridors full of restaurants. There are 31 wheelchair spaces and, according to Helenius, “in the best places.”

“In addition, there are induction loops and signal strips on the floor.”

Local matches are likely to pull the arena to the full, but the season will also accommodate those games that leave seats unsold. Then black curtains can be pulled to cover the upstairs.

“The downstairs can accommodate 8,500 spectators then,” Helenius says.

With curtains, Tampereen Kanne’s arena is the second largest ice rink in the League. If all seats are sold, the arena will accommodate 13,300 to 13,400 spectators and both ends will have a standing spectator capability.

At one time, the stands were a curse, but today, as creators of the atmosphere, they are almost essential. In them, people dare to throw their official eyes aside for even a moment.

The intense atmosphere of the arena is evidenced by the seats in the lower stands, which are stuck in NHL-style troughs in the trough.

Security Manager Helenius assures that the arena will be of a gold standard when completed.

“Related recycling and energy solutions. Aim for carbon neutrality. We use wind energy from the Tampere power plant. ”

One small part towards the greenery is that the other end of the training hall is the green roof.

Kannen the arena will be completed on time when looking at the calendar of Tappara and Ilves. Similarly to the World Cup schedules, but this has been expected.

Kalervo Kummola was his last job at the International Hockey Federation, IIHF, in winning the World Cup tournament in Tampere.

The first bigger promise of a new arena was to hit in 2012, when Finland won the World Cup tournament with Sweden.

Project then progressed slowly or not at all. The year 2012 came and went. So did many other World Cup tournaments since then.

The IIHF met to decide the fate of the 2021 World Cup in the German Games in 2017.

Finland was a candidate and lost the vote by two votes to Belarus, which took Latvia as its partner.

Eventually, Belarus went as it did, the coronavirus also came, and Latvia ran the race alone last summer.

“Fortunately, it was lost then. The Tampere arena would not have been completed in any way, ”says Kummola next to the new arena.

Kummola remember even further. At the same time as the Hartwall arena started operating, an arena project had to be launched in Tampere. That was the year 1998 and the Hartwall Arena had opened a year earlier.

“If you compare this to the Hartwall arena, this was brought to the center after many stages,” Kummola says.

The first plans were below the current Ratina shopping center.

“It didn’t really get the city excitement so Sarankulma, Tampella and everything else was offered. And the Duck Park field, which now has an artificial ice rink. There were others, but they didn’t inspire me. ”

“On the other hand, good. We now have a new generation hall if you compare to the Hartwall arena. Quietly good will come, you could say. ”

Kummola emphasizes that there was no funding for old projects. The completed Arena has a strong domestic funding base and institutional investors, Kummola confirmed.

“Even though I was a spiritual father and a pioneer, I’ve looked at this a little further. I haven’t gotten any cakes like this in 1973 when Kupittaa got a hall. It was my greatest achievement. ”

Kummola was in the stages of the Hartwall Arena Harry Harkimon with.

“Here we are now used to these hall projects. I look more at this new hall as a city hall. ”

to Tampere Finland’s first ice rink was built in Hakametsä in 1965, and in the same year the first World Hockey Championships in Finland were played.

World Cup matches have been played in Tampere since then, but after 57 years, Tampere is again the first host city.

The Lions will play all their matches in the new Arena. The Hartwall Arena will be the starting block for the Russian Olympic Committee, Canada and six other countries.

The Tampere World Cup will be played from 13 to 29. May 2022.