After Edmonton hockey nut Rob Suggitt visited every one of the NHL’s arenas this season, we asked him which rink delivered the best game presentation.
Without pausing to think, he singled out Amalie Arena, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“Tampa Bay surprised me,” Suggitt said. “They do a really good job with that stuff.”
Case in point: Bolts of Steel.
Lightning Vision’s fantastic homage to the old-school Nintendo video game Blades of Steel was projected onto the ice and shown over the Jumbotron in Tampa.
Great stuff that reminds us of a fun game that had no offside rule, handed out two-minute fighting penalties and awarded stationary, soccer-style penalty shots.
For those under a certain age, here is a taste of Konami’s glorious Blades of Steel, which first hit North American arcades in 1987, five years before the Lightning even existed.