Arena of the Kuznetsk Metallurgists named after O.I. Korolenko

The Arena of the Kuznetsk Metallurgists named after Oleg Ivanovich Korolenko is a sports venue in Novokuznetsk. It is not a football stadium, and it does not pretend to be one. The building sits on 24 Stroiteley Avenue. It has a concrete exterior with glass panels along the side. It was built to hold a crowd.

It opened on October 1, 1984, with 8,300 empty seats and no barriers. The highest attendance record stands at roughly 11,000 people, a number made possible because the chairs had not yet arrived. Football fans do not come here. The local club plays on a different ground, built a decade earlier on a surface of grass and mud. This arena belongs to ice hockey. HC Metallurg Novokuznetsk plays their home games here, as does the junior team, MHC Kuznetskie Medvedi. The floor is frozen, and the air smells of the rink.

A renovation finished in 2023 tightened the capacity to 6,818. The old numbers fell away, but the building remained. In December 2021, the city renamed the hall after Oleg Ivanovich Korolenko, a player who scored 253 goals in the Soviet championship over 15 years. He is not a name found on a plaque; he is a name found in the stands. The arena closed for a month in late 2023 after inspectors found faults in the safety systems, but it reopened.