The Alborz Den
Lore
The Alborz Den is vast, loud, and older in spirit than the league it has joined by roughly the age of everything. The ice is of the givre form, pale and dense. Under the Fortress designation, home goaltending is elevated to a degree Le Council's measurement office found difficult to accept. The office measured the net. Regulation. It measured the net again. Regulation. It measured the net a third time, from inside, and filed a report that Le Council has read and elected not to circulate. The Alborz Den has not been breached, and the office has stopped visiting it. The Tigers arrived as though they had always been here, and nobody in Tehran is prepared to argue otherwise.
The Building
A deep bowl dug into the ground at the foot of the mountains, so that the approach is level with the upper tier and every route to a seat leads downward. Rough concrete, unclad and unapologetic, warmed by tilework in blue and ochre that runs the full circumference of the concourse in a pattern the assessment team was unable to find the repeat in. The 22,400 seats are steep enough that the far side of the building feels close, and the noise, which has nowhere else to go, comes straight back down onto The Almighty Ice. The home net sits beneath the only skylight in the structure. Snow from the Alborz comes through it in winter and does not, per three separate observations, reach the ice.