Qualla: Tampere Ice Stadium

Tampere Ice Stadium: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Piquito, CC BY-SA 4.0. For fifty-six years, the best hockey in Finland was played in a low concrete box in a suburb called Hakametsä, out past the ring road, surrounded by pine woods and car parks. Ilves played there. Tappara played there. They played each other there, several times a season, in front of crowds that had been coming since their grandfathers' day. Then in November 2021 both clubs finished their last games, packed up their dressing rooms and moved about three kilometres west into a new downtown arena with a corporate name. The old building is still standing, still making ice, still hosting hockey - just not the kind that fills it.

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Image: Piquito | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tampere Ice Stadium: The Twenty-Ninth of January, 1965

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aleksi Stenberg, CC BY 2.5. Jaakko Tähtinen designed the hall, and it was built for the World Championships that Finland hosted that spring. It opened on 29 January 1965 with an all-star game: Tampere against the rest of Finland, which ended tied at four. Two days later Ilves and Tappara met in the first le...

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Image: Aleksi Stenberg | CC BY 2.5

Tampere Ice Stadium: Two Clubs, One Roof

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sharing a building with your fiercest rival is an unusual arrangement, and Ilves and Tappara did it for over half a century. Both clubs kept fan shops and VIP rooms in the same concourse. Both hung their retired numbers from the same ceiling. Tappara's side carried Kalevi Nummine...

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Image: kallerna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tampere Ice Stadium: Number 2

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 4.0. One banner belongs to a player who barely got to use the building. Jarmo Wasama was a 22-year-old Ilves defenceman, an Olympian at the 1964 Games, good enough that Finns still argue he might have become their country's first NHL player. On 2 February 1966 he was driving home from...

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Image: Tiia Monto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tampere Ice Stadium: A Room Built for Noise

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Piquito, CC BY-SA 4.0. The stands are stubbornly rectangular: a single main tier with an overhanging balcony down the western side, twenty suites and the press facilities opposite, standing places wedged into the corners. Most seats are padded now, though bare plastic survives up on the balcony. When a...

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Image: Piquito | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tampere Ice Stadium: What Happens to a Cathedral

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kerttu Forsman, Public domain. Plans for a modern arena circulated through the late 1990s and early 2000s and went nowhere. The city council finally approved one in May 2010, and the Nokia Arena opened on 3 December 2021 - roughly €124 million, around 12,700 seats for hockey, built over the railway lines in th...

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Image: Kerttu Forsman | Public domain