Following last year's trip to Chatham and a trip to Plymouth two years ago, it was now time to keep going with this Christmas family hockey trip tradition. This year, by random chance, we'd be following the Plymouth Whalers north to their new home since 2015, Flint Michigan.

The good thing was that instead of supporting Plymouth owner Peter Karmanos - who tried to close the lovely Chatham Memorial Arena and swindle the smaller city into building him a John Labatt Centre like London - we were instead supporting the group of Flint investors who bought the team after Karmanos was done with Plymouth and Chatham.

I followed the GPS to Flint's arena even though we were headed downtown to grab some dinner. This allowed us to take a different route into the city's core, one with rundown, abandoned apartment complexes and boarded-up gas stations.

After stopping at the arena briefly, we then set out to go to a K-Mart and the first one in our GPS was nothing but a big, beige, boarded-up box with grime marks where the letters used to be. Taking these rougher, forgotten back roads was reminding me of grim scenes I'd seen in Detroit and St. Louis.

There were more important observations than gawking at some rundown gas stations though. As we drove along there were permanent, metal road signs advertising water bottle pickup points due to the Flint Water Crisis. Driving by one, there was a guy in a old rusty landboat that had seen some Flint winters, stopped there while someone handed down a couple cases of bottled water off of a flatbed truck. Judging by these permanent Department of Transportation signs, it didn't look like they were replacing the lead pipes anytime soon.

(Looking online later, their goal is to have all the lead pipes replaced by 2020. How it works is that the city water is now declared safe, but lead in the water contaminated the pipes that fed peoples homes. Those pipes now need to be replaced.)

Flint's downtown was smaller than I remembered and had seen some revitalization since I'd last been here. With modern trends of younger folks returning to downtowns and with how I hadn't been to Flint in 10 years, it made sense that their main street had reduced its vacancy. I was pleased to see it.

We ate at a bar in a building that was once a men's clothing store, where the food was good and the draft Bell's Oberon was cold and delicious. Following dinner & after stopping at the mall on the way to Flint this afternoon, there wasn't much time to wander, but I found time to appreciate the art deco stylings of the Mott Foundation Building next door.

This building was the tallest building in Flint until they built Genessee Towers in 1968; and then became Flint's tallest building again when they imploded Genessee Towers in 2013.

Back out on the edge of Flint, we returned to the Dort Federal Credit Union Event Center. This arena didn't always have such a cumbersome name, starting out as the IMA Sports Arena before soon after becoming the Perani Arena (named for local sporting goods retailer Bob Perani, owner of Perani's Hockey World).

Going into this weekend, an arena built in 1969 was enough to give me hope this place could be interesting. Approaching from the outside though, it was just three giant boxes that each looked like a forgettable University building that gets replaced one day and you fail to notice.

We entered into a lobby area congested with a couple hundred people. On our left was the main Firebirds arena, separated from a smaller event space/arena on the other side of the lobby.

We were here so early that we could barely walk in this area, which didn't lend itself to pulling out my camera and taking pictures of the lobby area. It was sort of nondescript anyway & the best part was actually some teenager with a FLINT all caps toque like you see so many DETROIT all caps toques. I really wanted to go hit some liquor stores in search of one, but I didn't think my Mom would have it.

Anyway, it turns out that I should have taken a picture of the 1970s lobby as the rest of the arena was recently renovated and didn't have much character. (Although this did mean that the chairs were much more comfy than those horrible ones back in Plymouth.)

It's also a really simple layout without any quirks or sights. There's a narrow concourse that spans around the whole building, with simple, temporary beer stands and a small food area with very few exciting choices. Some of you would have probably liked that they had $3 PBRs tallboys, but since I live in an isolated land with limited choices, I had to use the opportunity to splurge on another can of Bell's.

The concourse was itself was jammed, although apparently not everyone was here because they drove from Windsor and their dinner was super quick, but rather because there was a chance to meet former Detroit Red Wing & four-time Stanley Cup champion Darren McCarty. Other than the two of us, everyone else rushed in to queue and wait for the retired enforcer from Burnaby.

As I didn't have that much interest in meeting McCarty, especially if I had to wait an hour to do so, I was happy that my Mom suggested walking through the seating bowl to snap a picture. Worked for me.

I was much more excited to see Zach Senyshyn, who the Bruins picked in the first round of the 2015 draft. This was the draft where they traded known talents for 2 additional first rounders and then had picks 13, 14 & 15. The only problem being 3 years later there's only 3 guys from that entire first round that haven't played in the NHL and 2 of them were Bruins picks! (And the other is a goalie!)

And of course I was more impressed with Tampa Bay prospect Boris Katchouk. At least Senyshyn had a laugh at our expense after I complained about how invisible he was, then he scored on a very nice deflection about 60 seconds later.

The Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds would dismantle Flint by a score of 5-0.

As for my overall impression of the arena, I went into this update romancing the past and thinking about how much I liked the Dort FCU Arena and this experience. The thing is though, is that looking at pictures and trying to explain it, I think it's simply a matter of how much credit I'm automatically going to award a mid-sized American city's arena that wasn't built in 2012 (especially one in the midwest). Dort FCU Arena is fine enough, but it's only that, fine enough. I'd be happy to return, but there are plenty of other places that would come first.