The Greenville Swamp Rabbits are the tenants here and were playing their final game of the season, which had been rescheduled from January due to bad weather at the time. No such concerns on this beautiful Sunday. There was a ticket special for $25 apiece, but that had expired, so the cheapest option was now $33 at the box office ($52 with fees on TicketMaster). This is insane for an ECHL game and I figured that there might be some freebies around. But as we walked toward the arena, there was a blood donation center offering two tickets for my plasma. I decided to do a bit of good and save some money at the same time. The process took about 30 minutes so we missed the start of the game, but given what we did see, we didn't miss much.
The arena opened in 1998 as the BI-LO Center after a local grocery and hosted the Greenville Grrrowl of the ECHL until 2006, when the team folded. The area was without pro hockey until 2010 when the Johnstown Chiefs moved here to become the Road Warriors. In 2013, Bon Secours (which means 'good help' in French), a local health concern, bought the naming rights and added Wellness to the name, and the locals soon began calling it 'The Well'. In 2015, the team rebranded as the Swamp Rabbits after the nickname of the Greenville and Northern Railway that began operation in 1920 (the railroad was abandoned in 2015 and is now a hiking and biking path known as the Swamp Rabbit Trail). Inside, there is a single concourse that was never too busy, although as you would expect, concession lines form during intermission.
Capacity for hockey is listed at 15,591, making it third in the league behind Orlando and Tulsa. As you can see above, one side of the upper deck is completely open, while the other side and end zones are curtained off (below), so the number of actual available seats is somewhat less than the official figure.
Attendance was generously listed at 5,554 and if there were half that on hand, I would be surprised. Average attendance this season is 4,704, ranking 14th in the circuit of 29 teams. We found seats in the first row of the second deck and stayed there for the game, wandering around at the intermissions.
A single center-hung scoreboard provides highlights, of which there were very few for this game.
Concessions are typical except for one very tempting fresh panini stand, where a Cuban sandwich is only $11. Not surprisingly, they were quite busy and with only two presses, there was a bit of a wait, so I had to pass as the next period was about to start.
The team has not had much success with just two division titles, including one last season where they lost to Orlando in the first round of the playoffs. A single retired number is for Bretton Cameron, who played here for seven seasons.
Overall, BSWA is your standard minor league hockey rink, with a good downtown location making it worth a visit as there is a lot to see in the area. The Greenville Drive of the South Atlantic League play on the other side of town but the two seasons don't overlap much, unless the Swamp Rabbits get into the playoffs. Still, if you are lucky, you can catch both on the same trip and enjoy a few days in Green Vegas.
The Game
The league leading South Carolina Stingrays, winners of the Brabham Cup (ECHL equivalent of the Presidents' Cup) had made the trip up from North Charleston on a 17-game win streak, while Greenville had been eliminated from the playoffs. As such, not much was expected from this battle, with both teams trying to avoid injury above all else. There were several draft picks on both squads but the only name I recognized was Hawerchuk as Dale's son Ben suited up for South Carolina.
After a scoreless first, Greenville got on the board early in the second when Jack Brackett, who had just graduated from R.P.I. after four seasons, wristed one that beat Seth Eisele top shelf. The rest of the period passed uneventfully, but just two minutes into the third, Jackson van de Leest tied it with a seeing eye goal that snuck through Mattias Sholl (in net above). Overtime loomed but with three minutes remaining, the Stingrays had a delayed penalty and the Swamp Rabbits brought out the extra attacker. The puck came to Brackett, who roofed a backhander that turned out to be the winning goal.
There were 80 total shots (the scoreboard was a bit slow to update) but most were of the harmless variety, good for goaltenders padding their stats at the end of the season. It wasn't much of a game, but nobody seemed to mind and nobody got seriously injured.
Notes
After a Greenville goal, the P.A. announcer says 'He Shoots!" and the fans reply "He Scores!". Then the fans tell the opposing goalie that he sucks and add "It's all your fault!" before finally chanting "Yes! Yes! Yes!" following Ric Flair. This pretty much encompasses every goal chant I've heard and is a bit much when one or two would do.
The arena is also used by Furman basketball, so I hope to be back at some point as part of my increasingly painful college hoops quest.
Best,
Sean
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