The name on the building may have changed — multiple times — but the memories have not. Not for Paul Maurice. Maurice was the Carolina Hurricanes’ coach when the team’s new arena in Raleigh was being built in the late 1990s.
The Canes were playing in Greensboro during construction, but the coaches and players checked in from time to time with site visits, putting on hard hats for an inspection as the steel girders were going up. Maurice made his latest visit to the arena this past week, coaching the Florida Panthers in a preseason game. In the 25 years since the arena opened, he has taken the Canes to a Stanley Cup final, and is now a Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Panthers.
“When we first moved to North Carolina, this was just a big red hole in the ground,” Maurice said Friday. And now, 25 years later? What was once the Raleigh Entertainment & Sports Arena was renamed the RBC Center, then PNC Arena and now Lenovo Center. It’s due to get a $300 million renovation.
“Still, and I always say this, what gets me is the trees,” Maurice said. “Because when we first got here, they were shrubs. Now, it’s like there is a canopy out there.
Everything is full grown and that’s how I measure how long it’s been. “It’s the trees. There was nothing here then.
” Hockey was something of novelty when the Hartford Whalers, coached by Maurice, moved to North Carolina in 1997. Raleigh had the IceCaps, but that was a minor league team playing in Dorton Arena. The H.