UNH Wildcats Hockey (Hockey East) @ Whittemore Center Arena (Durham, NH)

One of the more open arenas in Hockey East

*This GAME occurred on December 9, 2023. I did make a quick visit to the arena beforehand, but I don’t remember the date of that.

Also, I don't have a (usable) photo of the arena for this post sadly.

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham, NH is somewhere around an hour and a half north of Boston. It is the largest state university in New Hampshire, but is also apparently (according to Wikipedia) the most expensive state university for in-state students in the country (insert your own budget/sales tax joke here). While their hockey program is probably their most notable sport, they haven’t exactly won much: they only have three conference tournament wins but no national championships. Thus, most of their rivals (most notably their biggest rivals at the University of Maine) commonly refer to them as the “University of No Hardware”¹. It should be noted, however, that Wikipedia considers UNH one of Hockey East's "Big Four" (the other three being BC, BU, and Maine), which is somewhat interesting to me given that they haven't really been that good since I started following Hockey East (I'd argue that the fourth team right now is Providence, mainly because it feels like UMass is starting to fade)².

In a conference filled with arenas that either utilize a large main lobby or a concourse for most things, UNH’s Whittemore Center (Arena) does...both?

There’s a very large lobby I checked out a month or so before attending a game here which has ticket booths and a merchandise stand, but the concession stands are along a concourse that forms the top of the seating bowl (one concession stand per wall). Also, it seems as if said lobby is fully outside of the ticketed area (again, it has ticket booths), though there’s little of interest in it outside of some history pieces.

Unlike other Hockey East arenas, the concourse is fully visible from the ice and vice versa (save for the press areas on the “south” side). This is partially due to the fact that the suites, unlike BU or UML, are not attached to the concourse at all (they’re high above the ice on the same side as the entrances). Be aware that if you want to sit on the ends of the rink (assuming they’re available; one of them is usually reserved as the student section and sometimes they’re both reserved), it’s bench seating. This gives the arena a sort of “warehouse” vibe, which I honestly think is kinda neat because the whole arena feels more open³.

The students were pretty good here especially considering I went to a non-conference game near the end of the semester (aka Finals crunch time) vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (a school I know of because I know someone who went there). Similar to BU, they had “GOALIE” and “SIEVE” signs at the ends, but there was also a “BAD BOY” sign used for the TV broadcast when showing players who had just been sent to the penalty box (sadly, no COPS theme song). However, any discussion of UNH fans would be woefully incomplete without mentioning THE FISH.

Apparently, after UNH scores their first goal at all home games, someone throws a fish onto the ice. I’m not sure why they do it or if it was a student or someone else as it didn’t come from one of the student sections, but it seems to be fairly well known around the area. Also, I’ve heard that it’s only done after the first goal; since the first goal of the game I went to ended up being the only goal of the game, I’m not sure how true that is.

One other thing to note: my seat was in the first row I saw available, but ended up not being the first row in the arena. The ice here was shrunk down at some point (it was once 100 feet wide and is now 90 to be closer to NHL width), and vestiges of the wider ice are still visible (most notably behind the benches).

MERCH

I mentioned that the arena has a small merch stand, but what I should mention is that said merch stand straddles the lobby and concourse (so that fans can access it once they’ve scanned into the building); this is part of why I feel like the arena does both a lobby set up and a concourse set up. However, aside from the campus bookstore, Durham (the town UNH is in) has TWO additional stores in its downtown that specialize in sporting gear, so there’s no shortage of UNH merch to be bought...for the most part.

Sadly, I must mention the jersey situation: while a lot of fans seemed to have player replica jerseys when I went to the game, only three were available in the merchandise booth - none of which would have fit me. In addition, a different lot of fans (myself included) had these “fashion” jerseys made by some other company that were wildly different in design from the player jerseys. I’ve heard various reasons as to why UNH jerseys are unavailable, but I’m not sure why exactly this situation exists (especially given that they introduced a new alt in 2025). In fact, it's because of this jersey situation that I made at least two prior visits: one where I didn't know about downtown Durham's sports stores, and one where I bought a fan jersey and a mini stick.