The Grand Circuit
Lore
The Grand Circuit seats two thousand eight hundred people, making it the smallest arena in the league by a margin Le Council's facilities office describes as deliberate. It is also, per the same office, the single most valuable room in professional sport on a per-seat basis, by an amount it declines to compute in public. A moose appeared in the harbor. The Almighty Ice followed. The ice is of the givre form: pale, soft at the surface, feathered where it meets the boards. Under House Rules, winning wagers pay out multiplied by the goal differential. The house wins. So does whoever reads the room best. Le Council has received no complaints about the arrangement, which Le Council attributes to the composition of the room rather than to the fairness of the terms.
The Building
A narrow, tiered room built into the rock above the harbor, entered from the street at what is structurally the fourth level and descending from there. Two thousand eight hundred seats, all of them close, none of them cheap, upholstered in a deep red that the facilities office has confirmed is refreshed between fixtures. Brass rails, low warm lighting, and a ceiling worked in plaster that predates the manifestation and has never been catalogued. The Almighty Ice surface is regulation and not a centimeter more; the boards run so tight to the front row that spectators are asked, in three languages, not to place drinks on them. They place drinks on them. There is no upper deck, no scoreboard of any size, and no advertising of any kind. Results are posted by hand, on a board, by a person in a jacket. The moose is generally somewhere near the harbor entrance and is not asked to move.