📍 Glens Falls, New York
🏒 Home of the Adirondack Thunder

At the edge of the Adirondacks, an hour north of the state capital at Albany, the city of Glens Falls is not widely known outside upstate New York. Yet despite being a small Hudson River town with less than 15,000 inhabitants, Glens Falls is home to a professional sports franchise – the ECHL’s Adirondack Thunder.

The smallest market in minor league hockey got its sports start thanks to the construction of the Glens Falls Civic Center in 1979, which opened as the home of the AHL’s Adirondack Red Wings. After 20 years in the city, Detroit pulled its top-level club. The IceHawks – later rebranded as the Frostbite – of the United Hockey League took their place, folding in 2006. Over the next few years, the Albany River Rats played select games in Glens Falls, testing the waters for a possible AHL return. The league did eventually come back in the form of the Philadelphia Flyers’ Adirondack Phantoms in 2009. Their tenure at the Civic Center was short-lived, however, departing for the Lehigh Valley in 2014. The 2014-15 season saw the Adirondack Flames take up tenancy in the same league, and a mutual swap between Glens Falls and Stockton prior to the 2015-16 campaign resulted in the Flames heading west and the ECHL’s Thunder heading to New York.

The Civic Center – called Cool Insuring Arena for 8 seasons before becoming Harding Mazzotti Arena in 2025 – has around 4,800 seats, all of which are situated below the main concourse that rings the venue.

Near center ice, the concourse walls are adorned with plaques that make up the Adirondack Hockey Hall of Fame, which honors those who have helped grow and maintain pro hockey in the rural Capital District. Additionally, the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame is held beneath the bowl in the underground passageways.

Also down below is Heritage Hall, a secluded banquet area at ice level that has a full bar and tabletops for socializing.

Originating as the Cincinnati Cyclones in 1990, the Thunder franchise has bounced around markets from coast to coast – literally from Atlantic City to California – but didn’t find a foothold until settling in the Adirondacks. Since arriving in Glens Falls, the Thunder have captured the franchise’s only division titles (3) and even won an Eastern Conference championship in 2024.

The team has likewise seen some of the best crowds to ever pack the Civic Center, filling it with traditions like a deafening “Skol clap” – a rendition of the Viking war chant first introduced by Iceland’s soccer team – prior to the third period. It’s unique flavors such as this that make hockey in this small New York city a special experience that can’t be replicated by any big city club.