A quick look at the DCU Center (Worcester, MA)

About a year ago, I posted a bunch of old things from hockey games I went to back in 2023. However, there are two arenas I visited back then that I actually didn’t write about - mostly as I wasn’t sure what to say.

I don’t know if/when I’ll be getting back to these arenas, so I figured I’d do my best to write about them now (so forgive me if I’m more vague than usual). This is going up today as it's the date of the Worcester Railers home opener, in writing this, I realized something about THIS place in particular, which I'll get into later. For now, though, I should probably start with an intro to the ECHL, since this is (unintentionally) the first time I'm talking about it.

Long story short: the ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League) is to the NHL what Double-A is to Major League Baseball. However, if you recall me mentioning the first time I saw the AHL (i.e. the Triple-A league) that few players from the AHL go on to have notable NHL careers, that is even more the case with the ECHL, where fewer than 1,000 players have ever played an NHL game - with most of the notable ones being goaltenders. Now, for the "main event":

In 1994, the American Hockey League’s Springfield (I don’t think I should mention their name here, but think Cleveland baseball) made the short move east on the Massachusetts Turnpike to Worcester, MA, where they became the Worcester IceCats. Originally lacking any NHL affiliation, the team eventually became affiliated with (and was later sold to) the St. Louis Blues. In the fall of 2004, while the NHL was mired in its infamous season long lockout, the Blues sold the IceCats to the owners of their ECHL affiliate in Peoria, IL, who “moved” the team (by which I mean the Peoria team became an AHL team, and Worcester was gone from the AHL).

However, the city managed to secure a new AHL team in 2006, when the San Jose Sharks moved their operations into town (from Cleveland, OH). The Sharks spent almost a decade in Worcester, but in 2015, San Jose - as well as several other western based NHL teams - chose to relocate their AHL operations to the west coast for various reasons. Worcester was one of three New England cities to see their team head west (the other two being Manchester, NH and Springfield, MA), and while Manchester got an ECHL team (which folded in 2019), and Springfield got an AHL team from Portland, ME...Worcester had to wait until 2017 for hockey to return. When it did, it took the form of the Worcester Railers - a new team in the ECHL.

Since their establishment, the team has been...mostly okay. They haven’t really won much, and they’re not exactly one of the better teams in the ECHL attendance wise. A large part of that may possibly be due to the presence of stronger teams in the Boston area (i.e. the Bruins and the high-level college programs), but another factor is the lack of a Bruins connection: from the team’s founding until this past offseason, they were under the New York Islanders, but are starting a new affiliation this year (i.e. the Islanders have a new ECHL team). In an amazing display of "time is a flat circle", their new NHL affiliate is...

...The St. Louis Blues, who not only were the last AHL affiliate of the old IceCats, but JUST SO HAPPEN to have their current AHL affiliate in...

...Springfield, MA!¹

The arena is currently known as the DCU Center and has been for quite a while; however, DCU (the credit union behind the name) merged with another credit union recently, and I can't tell if/when a name change may happen (though it should also be noted that the naming rights deal is set to expire in 2027 as well).

On some level, it’s very much what you’d expect from a smaller, older arena (as it was opened in 1982 as the Worcester Centrum): a concourse that fully wraps around the arena but largely lacks views of the ice, various concession and beer stands, a split tiered seating bowl (with entrances at “mid level”), and “smaller” upper sections as curtains blocked off most of the upper seats.

One thing worth noting, though: the arena had been refurbished at some point, and the one Railers game I went to - the team’s 2023-24 home opener (which they won for what it's worth) - was the first game to showcase this renovation. As an aside, one of my favorite things outside the arena is a statue of Bob Cousy, who went to the College of the Holy Cross (and won an NCAA title) just south of downtown Worcester before becoming a Boston Celtics legend.

I was originally going to just focus on the “main arena”, but there’s also an attached convention center which I’ve visited multiple times (it was opened after a 1997 renovation). Each of those times, I came here for a Super Smash Bros. tournament series known as Shine; I won't go too deep into its history, but it was originally held in Boston before making the 45-mile journey west, and I visited it three times: 2019 (before the time of me writing about sporting venues/events), 2022, and 2023 (which, sadly, was the tournament’s final edition)².

If you’ve never been to a video game tournament before, it is a WILD experience. Not only do you get to see some of the top players in the world, but they’re often found wandering in and around the venue, so you can get SUPER CLOSE and personal with them (but maybe don’t do that second part). A large part of that is due to the fact that since there are A TON of games happening at once (due to the hundreds of entrants), matches happen all over the convention center floor. For me, one of the more interesting experiences at a tournament like this was seeing a GIANT crowd of spectators at one of the side stations because a top player is there (and then playing the game of "who's shoving a proverbial scrub into a locker right now").

I can’t recall too much of what happened in the 2022 and 2023 tournaments, but the 2019 one was famous for the rise of a player who, last I remember, was banned from participating in tournaments - though I URGE you to use caution if you’re going to look up who that player was and why they were banned...