The lights in the Seattle Kraken’s home arena were not fully turned on after the national anthem.
In the NHL match between Seattle Kraken and New York Rangers, a rare situation was seen when the lights of Seattle’s home arena did not turn on at the other end of the field after the national anthems.
The match was stopped after one minute of play for ten minutes, but not all the lights could be turned on. That’s why in the middle of each set, the teams switched sides.
– In some of the discussions, they thought that the match would be played to the end on Sunday. We thought no, let’s play, Rangers goalkeeper Jonathan Quick stated according to The Athletic.
Quick noticed right at the start of the match that the other end was more obscure. He ended up joking about it, referring to the arena’s name, the Climate Pledge. The name comes from climate change, as the goal of the Climate Pledge agreement is to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement ahead of schedule.
– This is the Climate Pledge arena. Maybe they used energy efficient bulbs or something, Quick quipped.
Kraken Attacker Jared McCann described that switching sides was not ideal, although he emphasized that the team was not going to use it as an excuse for the 1–4 loss.
– Changing sides every 10 minutes is pretty shitty. Especially when you gain momentum and the referee stops the game to change sides. It’s not nice McCann told the Seattle Times.
Finnish striker Kaapo Kako succeeded in finishing the match in the second period immediately after switching sides. He told Ilta-Sanomthat he got used to the darkness during the match.
– It’s never happened before against a game like this that you can’t get the lights to work. It’s good that the game was played though.