Watch the Stanley Cup Finals Outside

Throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Vancouver Canucks fans have gathered in living rooms, pubs, restaurants, and public spaces to view the action on the ice. While there was a bit of a push for City of Vancouver to open up Rogers Arena during away games (tickets for that will be available this week), I really like some of the outdoor options.

Photo credit: JeremyLim.ca

According to the Canadian Press, “The city has approved two open-air game-viewing locations, including a huge screen mounted on the back of a truck parked on Granville Street between Georgia and Robson streets Update the new site will be on Georgia at Homer to accomodate crowds, in the downtown core. As well, a second large screen will be added in the 700 block of Hamilton Street, where thousands of fans gathered under the giant screen mounted on the side of the CBC broadcast centre to watch Vancouver defeat San Jose to advance to the final.”

Canada Place will be showing all of the final games on their big screen just outside the sails, facing the plaza and street, and SFU will have all of the games as well.

Crowds gathering outside to collectively experience the Stanley Cup Finals against Boston will definitely bring back some of the excitement from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games.

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

Out in Surrey you can watch the final games at Central City Plaza (family-friendly) and Abbotsford’s arena will broadcast games once Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion moves out.

Update There will be a street closures and transit re-routes in particular for the big screen and and viewing areas downtown. The Buzzer, Translink’s blog, has more information about the routes that will be effected. “All buses will be detoured off of the Granville Mall on Canucks game-days from 2pm until end of service. During the Granville Mall closures, the buses will use their regular detour routes (Northbound on Seymour and Southbound on Howe).”

Update For game 7, road closures will begin at 12:00pm and liquor stores downtown (all of them, not just BC Liquor stores) will shut their doors at 4:00pm. Most traffic closures are spanning major arteries (Georgia, Robson) from Homer to Thurlow. Check in with @VancouverPD on Twitter for updates on crowds and closures. For aerial shots of the crowd, follow @CTVbc on Twitter as their Chopper 9 will be up above downtown snapping photos.

Want to know how Vancouver celebrated when they won the cup in 1915? Listen to an interview I did with the former owner of the Vancouver Millionaires.