21. February 2025
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Watching the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center

New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center
4

Rating

 4.0/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Well connected with public transport
  • Very moderate admission and good ticket situation
  • Good seating

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Limited food situation
  • Weird announcing and "pranks"

I had three matches with the Pittsburgh Penguins in April 2024. While the first match at Madison Square Garden was a debut to me, I have been to the other arenas before. However, both visits have been in the pre-Flyctory.com times. In this post, I take you to the second stage of my trip, watching a match of the New Jersey Devils at their Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. Here are my thoughts.

 

Prudential Center – Location & Traffic

Prudential Center is rather nicely located in Newark. The arena is just a five to ten minute walk away from Newark Penn Station. If you stay in Manhattan, you can easily reach the station for some 5 USD one-way with NJ Transit, you also operate several trains an hour on this connection in later evening times. You may, of course, also use trains heading Southbound to other New Jersey destinations. Pricing for parking also feels being much more reasonable than in other places. I spotted a parking garage a short walk away from the arena, which took 25 USD. There are multiple parking options around the arena.

As I did take NJ Transit from my hotel, I cannot judge on the car traffic situation around Prudential Center before and especially after the match. Quite a lot of people headed to the train station, which felt to be overall well organized.

 

Prudential Center – Arena & Ticket Situation

Prudential Center is a multi-purpose arena with a capacity of 16,514. The venue has been opened in 2007, It feels rather modern, without being too posh. Even though I “just” had seats behind one of the goals, I really enjoyed the comfort and the view from the seats. The jumbotron in Prudential Center is really nice as well.

Regarding the ticketing, the New Jersey Devils are a great option, especially for travelers, if you are in the Greater New York area and want to see an NHL match. Ticket pricing is especially much lower than at Madison Square Garden, for example. I had a ticket behind one of the goals (double attack zone by Penguins), which was 134 USD. Even though the Devils gain more and more popularity, you should also be able to grab a ticket more easily compared to other Northeast teams. Tickets have rotating bar codes, but you can conveniently put your Ticketmaster purchase into your Google Wallet, so that you don’t need internet connection when entering the arena.

 

Prudential Center – Atmosphere

Even though the Devils dominated the match for the first 55 minutes, the atmosphere in Prudential Center was significantly worse than at the New York Rangers the day before, for example. There was some pushing by the audience in power play and penalty killing situations. I liked that the Devils introduced the starting six of the guest team (which was named first, in contrast to the match before) as well. When the game turned, the speaker spoke extremely fast, so that the announcements were practically impossible to understand. I do not like that unsportsmanlike behavior. I also don’t like that the threw a big bag of popcorn on a Penguins fan in the aisles, regardless of the team he is supporting. This kind of “prank” is just a useless waste of food to me and does not comply to the NHL Code of Conduct rules (which generally do not seem to apply for the referees as well).

There was a weird situation during the match. The referees changed a decision (boarding penalty) after the situation has been put on the jumbotron. There was no coaches challenge. Regardless of which decision was right, this behavior felt weird to me.

 

Prudential Center – Food & Shopping

I had thought about buying a ticket for one of the middle seats on the lower rink. At Prudential Center, this comes with the perk that you have free food and drinks from buffets next to the seats. Unfortunately, this comes with a downside, if you are at the other seats. The range of food offered is rather limited. Honestly, I was also not happy at all with the prices, which were even higher than I was used to from Madison Square Garden the day before or good, old PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh. I finally opted for a 7.99 USD plus tax slide of cheese pizza, which was not a good choice, definitely. The food situation might be better on the upper levels, though.

The Devils Den operates several stores with merchandise around the arena. I did not go for the largest one on ground level, so that I missed all the typical weird items, but had a look at their jerseys and clothing. The processing felt to work very well.

 

Prudential Center – My View

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