📍 Vancouver, British Columbia
🏒 Home of the Vancouver Goldeneyes

An icon of the Vancouver sports scene, the Pacific Coliseum has been the host of some of the Lower Mainland’s most beloved hockey teams. The venue has seen many memorable moments over its nearly 60-year history, from championship series to Olympic events. Now, with the arrival of the PWHL’s Vancouver Goldeneyes, a new era has dawned on the Coliseum.

North America’s premier women’s hockey league, the PWHL is an up-and-coming circuit that began play in 2024. Over its first few seasons, it has grown tremendously in both fan support and geographic footprint. The Goldeneyes, in fact, are the league’s first expansion franchise, joining the ranks alongside the nearby Seattle Torrent for the 2025-26 campaign. The team’s name and logo – inspired by a type of duck commonly found on the West Coast – are emblazoned at center ice of the Pacific Coliseum, making the Goldeneyes the only club in the 8-member league with their logo painted on the playing surface of their own exclusive home venue.

Pacific Coliseum is notable as the former home of both the Vancouver Canucks and the WHL’s Giants. The building opened in 1968 as a new home for the Canucks – then a member of the professional Western Hockey League – and continued in that role until 1995, seeing the team transition to the NHL and compete for two Stanley Cups under its roof. For a few brief years in the ’70s, the Coliseum was also the primary venue for the WHL’s Nats and the WHA’s Blazers, furthering its hockey resumé. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, the building dutifully hosted figure skating and speed skating competitions. After the Vancouver Giants – who had played there since 2001 – left for Langley in 2016, the arena was devoid of a primary tenant until the alighting of the Goldeneyes in 2025.

Despite its age, the Coliseum has been kept fresh and fan-friendly thanks to many renovations and upgrades. In 2007, overhauls to the ice surface and HVAC systems took place in advance of the Winter Olympics, while a new videoboard and exterior lighting system installed in 2023 enhanced the fan experience. What hasn’t changed too much, however, is the venue’s seating capacity, which has remained just above 16,000 since at least 1978.

The Goldeneyes have been drawing some tremendous crowds to their barn, filling a women’s hockey void in Western Canada that many didn’t know needed to be filled. With a fanbase that leans more female than male, the team has even gone and converted some men’s washrooms to women’s in order to provide a more balanced experience for patrons.

Something else the Goldeneyes have done is open the main doors of the Coliseum to the outside plaza, integrating into the concourse a new common area and the food trucks found there. Some of the options – although they do rotate – often include mac & cheese, teriyaki chicken, tacos and grilled cheese. Inside the building, there’s meat pies, carved roast beef, pizza, a Triple O’s outpost and offerings from Parallel 49 Brewing.

The Name’s Eyes … Goldeneyes
At the start of each intermission, the team plays the iconic theme music from GoldenEye 007, a video game developed for Nintendo 64 in the late ’90s that’s centered around the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. Other tracks that feature the word “Goldeneye” in their title or lyric body also ring through the arena.

With a bright future ahead of them and the strong backing of hockey fans all across British Columbia, the Goldeneyes look to challenge the Minnesota Frost – the PWHL’s perennial champions thus far – for their first Walter Cup, bringing the glory days back to the Pacific Coliseum. The team has truly breathed new life into The Nest – the most recent in a long line of nicknames for the venue – virtually guaranteeing that both it and the Goldeneyes will endure as staples on the Lower Mainland sports scene for a long time yet.