Study says Scotiabank Arena has most and best-rated bars nearby of Canadian NHL rinks

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New research has tabbed Toronto as the winner of the Canadian NHL arena with the most and best-rated bars and pubs in close vicinity.

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The study by Onlinecasino.ca found that Scotiabank Arena, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, has 90 bars or pubs within a mile (1.6 kilometres), well ahead of Vancouver’s Rogers Arena (64 watering holes), Montreal’s Bell Centre (55), Winnipeg’s Canada Life Centre (39) and Edmonton’s Rogers Place (37).

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Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome (34) ranked sixth amongst the seven Canadian teams and to little surprise, Ottawa’s Canadian Tire Centre, which is all the way out in Kanata (the Senators hope to build an arena in the city centre, which will improve things) had just four, according to the study.

While Toronto led the way amongst the Canadian arenas, it ranked far behind the overall winner, New York’s Madison Square Garden, which has 184 bars and pubs, according to the research, more than twice as many as Scotiabank Arena. Toronto was right up there with No. 2 Nashville (Bridgestone Arena, with 94) and had one more bar or pub than No. 4 Boston (TD Garden) and was well ahead of No. 5 Columbus (Nationwide Arena, 68). Vancouver was 8th overall when all NHL teams were included, Montreal 11th.

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Carolina (PNC Arena, three bars or pubs) and the New York Islanders (UBS Arena, 1) pulled up the rear, trailing third-last Ottawa.

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Onlinecasino.ca said the research was conducted by collecting all stadiums and their addresses from Google. Then Yelp, Tripadvisor and Google Maps were scraped for “bars & pubs” via filters. They then filtered the data of the three websites to avoid repetitions and took the best-reviewed bars from Google Maps.

The best-reviewed bars or pubs by NHL arenas with average ratings of 4.9 out of 5 each were Toronto’s The Pub (60 York St., but temporarily closed), Tzin Wine and Tapas in Edmonton and New Jersey’s The Deep Inn.

Ottawa (Bert’s) and Florida (Harrison’s Pub) brought up the rear with their best-reviewed bars averaging a 2.0 out of 5 rating.