'It'll be awesome': Nearly $1M jumbotron hoisted at SaskTel Centre

People attending events at Sasktel Centre will notice a big change to their viewing experience — literally.

A brand new jumbotron will be unveiled this weekend when the Saskatchewan Rush play the Colorado Mammoth on Saturday night and the Saskatoon Blades host the Moose Jaw Warriors on Sunday afternoon.

The screen came with a price tag of just under $1 million, plus installation and shipping.

“The fans are going to have something special and something new to come to the rink and give them a reason to come out,” said Colin Priestner, president & general manager of the Blades as well as president and governor of the Rush.

“I just can't wait to have everybody come see the big screen on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, I think it'll be awesome.”

The screen rivals the video quality of jumbotrons in NHL arenas with more than six million pixels — the jumbotron the Nashville Predators installed in 2019 has a mere four million.

When Sask Entertainment Group, owned by the Priestner family, started to co-manage Sasktel Centre with the Saskatchewan Place Association, the idea of the new jumbotron was floated.

“One of the first things we talked about in terms of wanting to be a part of that was investing some money in the building, knowing that we are going to be here for several years and have to make the best of an older rink,” said Priestner.

“I think the most obvious thing that everybody came up with would be a new jumbotron that would be something great for our fans to have in these last years before this building is in its final days.”

The delivery of the nearly 14 thousand pound screen was delayed by the devastating flooding British Columbia faced last yer.

At one point it was left sitting on a ship in Vancouver Harbour for an extended period of time

The old scoreboard was installed in the fall of 2009, shortly before the building hosted the World Junior Hockey Championships.

“There's so much we can do that's just not the standard letterbox, you got your score at the top and the hard lights are kind of wired in and then you can kind of show the video screen and that's it,” said Priestner.

“Now we've got the ability to kind of make it a part of our game presentation, we can show different types of stats, time on-ice, shots, more advanced stats kind of in real-time on the clock.”

Priestner says Blades and Rush games will follow the province's lead on COVID-19 rules, with no proof of vaccine requirements and public masking mandates coming to an end on March 1, 2022.

“We're going to follow the province’s mandate, but I think the capacity limits are off, there's no reason we can't safely and bring in 15,000 people to a Rush game or to a Blades game,” he said.