Sacred Heart Pioneers Men's Hockey (Atlantic Hockey America) @ Martire Family Arena (Fairfield, CT)

My final trip for 2025: one of college hockey's newest gems

*This trip occurred on December 30, 2025, but there's also a little bit about a visit to the university bookstore on a date I forgot.

Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT (about 60 miles from the heart of New York City) is a rather small university...you’d think. However, it’s the second largest Catholic university in New England (behind good ol’ Boston College), and was one of the first Catholic universities to be staffed by laypeople (i.e. not priests/nuns/other religious men and women). It's also a surprisingly "young" institution, having been founded in 1963 (which means that there's a decent chance that some of the professors who teach there are older than the university itself).

There’s not a ton of information about their athletics department outside of the fact that they appear to be members of A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT CONFERENCES which vary by sport - though their primary conference is the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (or MAAC) - a very low profile conference in most sports. Of course, since I’m focusing on hockey for this post, I’ll just focus on that.

The team itself is in Atlantic Hockey America, so it’s not exactly a large player in the general college hockey scene (along with the rest of AHA). Case in point: according to Wikipedia, they've only had two alums reach the NHL, and the two have a combined 184 games in the NHL heading into the 2025-26 NHL season - with one of the two responsible for all but one of those games¹. However, they do have an interesting history (which seems to be a thing with hockey teams based in Connecticut that aren't the Yale Bulldogs).

The program started out as a D-III program in 1993, but was promoted to D-I in 1998 when the MAAC started a hockey conference (Sacred Heart, however, wasn't a full MAAC member back then). A few years later, the MAAC hockey conference disbanded and (essentially) became Atlantic Hockey (I went over this back when I talked about Holy Cross; also, obligatory mention of their former "Web 1.0" era logo).

When the program started, they played at a community rink in Milford, CT - quite a distance from Sacred Heart’s campus in Fairfield. They played here for a surprisingly long time; it wasn’t until 2016 that the program moved a bit closer to home (and to something more reasonable for D-I hockey) - moving to Bridgeport’s (now) Total Mortgage Arena. They were in Bridgeport for a few years, and in 2023, the team got a new home much closer to the school’s main Fairfield, CT campus: Martire Family Arena.

Opened on January 14, 2023, Martire Family Arena is the newest college hockey arena in Connecticut (by ONE DAY) and the second largest in AHA in terms of seating capacity (among the men's teams²). Named after (what else) a donor (who happens to be a minority shareholder in the Vegas Golden Knights), it's honestly a REALLY nice arena - especially for the conference the Pioneers are in (and I feel like the same can be said of the Bentley Arena, which is coincidentally where I saw the Pios for the first time back in 2024).

The first thing you should probably know about the arena is that it's not on the school's main campus - it's about a mile away on the school's "West Campus". What's interesting, however, is that the parking garage (or at least the main one for the arena) is underneath some of the buildings on campus, and has (more or less) direct access to the arena - you can get from the garage to the arena without having to deal with whatever's going on outside! This is SUPER useful during hockey season, when it's typically no warmer that 40ºF outside (and sometimes raining/snowing as well).

If you enter from the garage (as it's technically the "secondary" entrance), you'll actually be entering at suite/club level (i.e. an upper deck area which is reserved as "premium seating") - there's a pair of staircases and a singular escalator (which is weird) leading down to the arena's concourse. The entire concourse has unobstructed views of the ice, so you can, more or less, see the game from just about anywhere on the concourse - though as I learned at a critical moment, some things can't be seen while in line for concessions.

Two of the walls of the arena are purely windows; apparently, the building has a system where the windows can be tinted to prevent glare (according to some videos I saw prior to this trip). Opposite one of these "massive window walls", the arena has two main concession stands in the corners on the "south" side of the ice (aka where the TV cameras are situated), and one of them (next to the arena's main entrance) features a pizza oven! I ended up getting a pizza about midway through the game, and it was actually pretty good (it had that "proper" Neapolitan texture/char). Above these concession stands are the aforementioned premium seating areas/suites; while SOME tickets were available for part of this section, they cost over $100, so it was a no-go for me (at least on this occasion). There are two smaller concession stands in the "far" corners of the arena (i.e. the corners opposite the main stands), but both were closed during this game.

Since I mentioned ticket prices earlier, I should ALSO mention that for twenty bucks plus TicketMaster shenanigans, I got a seat two rows from the ice right on the red (center) line! For seats in the seating bowl, it's about $15 for end seats and $20 for side seats, but if you choose the top row, it's slightly more - though you get what I think is the best view of the game as well as a little table in front of you (similar to what I got the first time I went to Jersey Mike's Arena). However, be forewarned if you choose to sit next to a hockey team's bench: it smells AWFUL thanks to the physicality of hockey (there's a reason the only player who typically doesn't get any ice time during a game is the backup goaltender).

One fair warning if you're sensitive to loud noises: there's a set of real goal horns here (something surprisingly rare in New England), and in what I can only assume is an attempt to intimidate the visiting team, they're basically "aimed" right at the visitors' bench (which was right next to my seat). Also, before I talk about the game itself, I feel like I should mention that there was something rather interesting behind the net Sacred Heart defends twice: A desk which appears to be for pre/postgame shows. I have no idea how often it's used, however, as most college hockey broadcasts are purely the game itself...

Anyway, now that I've talked about the arena, let's talk about this game - starting with the fact that this trip almost happened in October. I had originally thought about coming here on October 18th, and then saw a ticket deal for that day pop up, but felt the timing of a 5 PM game an hour and a half away from home wasn't quite right for me (plus the Gotham FC Open House made things a bit complicated). I still wanted to make a visit (as I thought the arena looked COOL in photos), so I ended up on this game/date, as the 4 PM start time felt a little bit better...and then the Rutgers men's basketball game happened.

There was NO way this would top what happened that night, and I felt that ending the year on that note would be special. However, there were no other dates on Sacred Heart's 2025-26 calendar that I could feasibly swing (as I have plans for the only other afternoon game on their schedule), so I ended up right back at this game.

It is difficult for me to rate how the atmosphere for Sacred Heart hockey is, as classes were not in session during this game thanks to the between semester break and, for whatever reason, what I assume are student seats were not available for purchase at all (I've seen evidence that Sacred Heart has a band during games). However, there was a decent crowd on hand - even if they're more of a "Princeton" level crowd versus a "BC/BU/Northeastern" (due to the lack of students).

If you thought the history of Sacred Heart's hockey team was interesting, it's nothing compared to their opponent for this game: the Robert Morris Colonials from just outside of Pittsburgh, who were DISBANDED in 2021 and then brought back after massive backlash. Despite the Colonials getting two late goals to make things interesting, they were never truly in the game - partially as they got the aforementioned "goal horn in their faces" six times (though one of the goals was disallowed because...something; they didn't show the replay in the arena).

Also, a few final notes from this game:

1. Shoutout to the guy I saw in the AIC jersey - maybe one day they'll get to have a Robert Morris-like comeback...
2. #JusticeforCroixKochendorfer - you cannot let a dude with a name like that ride the bench the whole game - especially when you make a goalie change...
3. Sacred Heart's website indicates that women's hockey games are free! However, that likely means that there's fewer things open, and that suite level seats are unavailable...

MERCH

During a drive from New Jersey to Boston (I forget when), I decided to visit the Sacred Heart bookstore on the main campus to see what hockey merch they had. Alas, the bookstore didn’t have jerseys - just sticks and pucks (which I got back then). I mentioned earlier that parking is more or less a non-issue for hockey games; however, it was when I visited the bookstore as I could not find regular visitor parking for some reason.

At the arena, there's a dedicated team store as you enter the concourse from the parking garage entrance. A quick check of Sacred Heart's online store before this game indicated that only "fan" jerseys were available, but the arena store had a few "replica" jerseys meant to emulate the jerseys the players wear (but fully sublimated - including the "Adidas shoulder dimples"); I ended up getting one of these sublimated replicas which features the number 63 on it - representing the year Sacred Heart was founded (thank goodness it wasn't 67 or 69).

One last note about jerseys: I have seen what I THINK are "deadstock" player jerseys on eBay (i.e. jerseys made for the team's players but unused), but none of them are my size (which may be due to the fact that they were made specifically for the players - and I've found that anything smaller than what is effectively a 2XL is RARE for player jerseys...).

And with that...2025 is over.

I could talk about how starting this blog and finally putting myself out there like this was a massive undertaking, but I think the best way for me to end this first "year" of Sportventures is by saying this:

I have BIG plans for 2026.