THP #52: Matthews Arena

December 8, 2024 – Boston, Massachusetts
Northeastern v Colgate
Men’s Basketball

I remember the first time I went to Matthews Arena. I was young. Keni Gibson was playing goal for Northeastern Hockey and his college career ended in 2005 right before I turned 14. 

Perfect for this post, they were playing Iona. Iona hockey lasted five years as a D1 program. From 1998-2003, the Gaels played at the New Rochelle Skating Center, just outside of New York. They didn’t find much success outside of an appearance in the conference final in 2002.

Iona hockey was a flash in the pan. Matthews Arena isn’t a flash in the pan, it IS the pan. Opened in 1910, the original Boston Arena is the oldest multipurpose use arena in the world. 

You cannot tell the story of American sports without Matthews Arena. You cannot tell the story of the 20th century in America without Matthews Arena.

It was the first home of the Bruins, the Celtics, the Carolina Hurricanes (then the New England Whalers.) The hockey teams of all four D1 schools in Boston (BC, BU, NU, Harvard) all played here at some point. 

Reggie Lewis played his college basketball here. Eddie Shore played his hockey here. Chuck Connors (star of the show The Rifleman) played for the Celtics. Ed Leede played for the Celtics here for two years. His alma mater, Dartmouth, named their arena after him. 

Bob Cousy started his career here. Red Auerbach began coaching the Celtics here. Shit, the Celtics had their first ever winning season here in 1951. 

The first Stanley Cup final between two NHL teams happened in 1927. Wanna guess where the first game was? 

The NHL gives out 20 individual awards each year. Four of those trophies were named after people who played or coached at Matthews: 

Montreal goalie Georges Vezina – goalie of the year

Ottawa/Toronto forward King Clancy – award for leadership and humanitarian work in the community. 

Red Wings coach Jack Adams – coach of the year

Bruins coach Art Ross – player with the most points

The original Boston Arena burnt in 1918 and was rebuilt in 1921. Even with the rebuild, everything I said above is still true. That’s just how old this building is and how tied into the city of Boston it’s been since day one.

President Roosevelt spoke here. Both Franklin AND Teddy. The Doors recorded Live in Boston here. 

All throughout the 20th century, Matthews Arena is there. A gathering place. A place for moments in time.

My moments came in the 21st century. I saw JJ Barea play his college ball here. I was here in 2015 when Tom Izzo and Michigan State came to town and packed the arena full. Over 5,000 in the barn that day. 

I saw my friend Matt, a friend so close that years later he would officiate my wedding, walk across the stage and become a law school graduate here. I’ve covered games here in print, I’ve broadcasted hockey here in the chills of winter.

Every fan of college sports in and around Boston will have a Matthews Arena story. It’s eternal. It’s a couple years older than my maternal great grandmother. Matthews is always. Always is a lie.

And that’s why I was here for this game. The arena is coming down soon. No one is happy about it but parts of it are actively condemned as we speak. One wall is being held up with solid steel support beams so that it doesn’t cave in. One end of the balcony is tarped off and will never reopen. The soil was tested and is a  bingo card of every horrible poison and carcinogen used in construction back in 1910. Lead. Asbestos. Everything. It’s time to go.

Time comes for everything. People. Places. Ideas. Time comes for it all. In a best-of-seven you might escape with a win or two but time never loses a series. And so the number for old Boston Arena has been called.

It will be torn down some time in 2025 and the rebuild will begin. Basketball will almost certainly move across campus to the Cabot Center. Hockey? No one knows yet. I think it’ll be TD Garden but nothing is anywhere close to set in stone.

Writing this in the press center I keep finding myself looking up to the ceiling. The old timber slats stained by time, newer replacements poking through here and there. They don’t build em like this with timber much anymore. Yes, the new arena at the University of Idaho is a beautiful timber room, but that’s also a love note to the state and school’s history with the timber industry. This place was built when timber was king and the creaks and chips of time remain.

The next building here will be shiny and sparkly and be presented with all the buzzwords, and it’ll be nice. But it won’t be this. It won’t have the stories, the history, the quirks. To me.

My daughter and grandkids will have the stories to tell one day about the new building. And I like that. It’ll be an always for them. Always is forever a lie.

But a moment with Bella is always the truth. 

…

Inside Matthews

This is Matthews Arena. Walk with me.

What song is the pep band playing? Been in my head all week.

Matthews has all the quirks and crevices you’d expect from a building this old. It looked oh so different when I first went. I fished out an old photo of me with my friend John after a Wentworth hockey game. The Leopards used to share the building before the renovations. Yes, it’s dark because it was my father taking it on a disposable camera in 2002 but you can tell how barren it is compared to now.

A century ago, the building featured a regal, ornate arch at it’s entrance.

Today, the remnants of the arch have been built over with brick but are clearly still visible.

Now let’s discuss Section 18, Row L, Seat 8. Like most early 20th-century sports venues, although there are very few left, there are obstructed view seats. Pillars right in the middle of the seating bowl were placed to support upper levels. Fenway Park across town is famous for obstructed views in its grandstand sections.

However few seats, seats that cost real American dollars, are as bad as Section 18, Row L Seat 8 at Matthews Arena.

That photo is while sitting, not standing right behind the post. It is one of a kind.

Also one of a kind is the Grinold Media Center.

Named for former sports information director Jack Grinold, the media center has one of the best views of any press box in all of sports.

However, as the Griswold Center was built into the building during a renovation more than a decade ago, it is woefully cramped and undersized for what it is being asked to do.

Look at how little space you have to maneuver in the front row. And this is with all the chairs completely pushed in.

Sure, the chairs are nice. And well-appointed with the branding…

But it’s an absolute nightmare trying to get in and out. There is a smaller upper level but those seats are assigned to support and university staff. It’s such a nightmare wedging in here. I wish they had just had folding chairs.

The media center at the new building will undoubtedly be better than this.

Now about that jumbotron. Look at this thing.

At 675 square feet, which was bigger than my wife’s first apartment from a decade ago, and 30,000 pounds this board is gargantuan. It’s larger than several of the videoboards in the NHL (yes, I checked).

Why in the hell does Matthews Arena, an early 20th-century building that sits less than 5,000 people, have a videoboard that’s larger than NHL buildings? I’m not a structural engineer, but it would seem to me that hanging a 30,000-pound weight from the roof of the damn building after more than a century of use may not have been the best idea.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and it’s really hard to think that the impending end of the building wasn’t accelerated by the new videoboard being hung at the end of 2018.

But it’s still Matthews, in all its warts and quirks and weirds. I’ll miss it.

The Game

It was a pretty standard December game. A weekend non-conference game between schools close to each other. It’s finals season so travel is difficult so you get games like these in the 12th month across the country.

This one featured a Colgate program in rebuild mode. Oh, by the way, yes, Colgate the college and Colgate the toothpaste is the same family. Anyway, the Raiders have won the last four Patriot League titles and have made every final since 2019, a game that they also won. Now, they are off to a two-win start to the season. College sports comes and goes and this year is very much staring into the abyss after years at the summit.

And the game started as such with Northeastern opening up a 14-6 lead just about 10 minutes into the game. It was a grind, it was hard to watch. Then I turned my camera on.

That first video started with Northeastern up five and the last one ended with Colgate up five, and they were just 2:10 apart. It was a total shot in the arm for the Raiders.

Northeastern didn’t just roll over or anything, they hung with it, but the Raiders extended the lead out to 10 late in the first half.

Please excuse the camera tilt. I’m still figuring out the gimbal.

Junior guard Rashad King finally broke the run for the Huskies. He had 10 in the first half. We’ll come back to him.

Even though Colgate flipped the game on its head, the Huskies righted the ship before the break. A quick run was capped by this floater from Ryan Williams to send game into half with Colgate up four.

The Huskies kept the pedal down to start the second half and regained the lead less than two minutes after the break. A five-point Husky lead became a three-point Raider lead.

Then the game was on.

Colgate was able to control a few minutes in the middle of the half, led by Chandler Baker, who finished with 12 points off the bench.

The problem for Colgate was simple: they didn’t have Rashad King.

What? Just? How do you defend an inbounder taking one step in, grabbing an airball on the tiny negative sliver of court only to readjust to reverse lay the ball in without a dribble? He was magic all afternoon. He made his free throw to put Northeastern back ahead.

Oh hey. It’s Rashad again. He made a habit of that. And that three ignited the Huskies in a big way. That four-point lead became six became nine became 11 with this Harold Woods layup with 2:40 to play.

But then there was Brady Cummins with one of his three threes on the game en route to his team-high 15 points. The Raiders weren’t rolling over.

A free throw from King with 68 seconds left made it a nine-point game and locked it up for the Huskies. Kept the camera going to get the final celebration though.

Ok. A three from Baker. Game down to six points. No biggie. Band had time for a banger during the timeout.

All Northeastern needed to do was get another bucket and the game was cooked.

And LA Pratt cooked it to a nice medium well.

Huskies up eight with 53 seconds left. All that was left to do was watch the seconds tick out.

What’s that? Colgate dropped a 5-1 run to make it a four-point game? Alright. I’ll take the camera back out.

Of course, Northeastern still had three timeouts left and just needed to get the ball over the timeline, hit a few free throws and the game was done. Easy.

Ok. One timeout. Surely they wouldn’t need a secon…they did? Ok, happens. They won’t need to burn the third I bet though.

So Northeastern burned all three of their timeouts without advancing the ball beyond the foul line. And now they NEEDED to get it in.

Finally Rashad King gets to go to the line. He would split them to make it a five-point game with 12 seconds to go. And Colgate responded with a drawn foul of its own. Nicola Louis-Jacques earned a trip to the line…for three shots.

He made all three before the Raiders fouled JB Frankel.

So Frankel’s split made it a three-point game before fouling Jalen Cox. Cox made both. It was a one-point NU lead with five seconds left.

Frankel then found his way back to the line and this is how things went.

Just bananas basketball. Huskies survive tripping over themselves and giving up nearly all of an eight-point lead with 50 seconds left. College basketball, man.

Northeastern 78, Colgate 75. Final.
Time of Game – 2:06:12
Player of the Game – Rashad King (NU) – 23 points, 8-13 shooting, 8 rebounds.

..

I went hunting for old schedules to find that Iona hockey game. The score of 7-2 had stuck in my head. A Northeastern win. US College Hockey Online is a wonderful repository of old college hockey schedules and other information.

So I went searching for it. Every game. All four of the Keni Gibson years at NU. And then, on the last season I pulled, his freshman season, there it was: Saturday December 15, 2001: Northeastern 7, Iona 2.

That day I said hello the Matthews Arena and now almost 23 years to the day later I said goodbye. Sports are forever my circle of time.

Thanks for reading. Here’s one for the road for the old barn. You’ll be missed Matthews. Thanks for the century.