G-Drive Arena
History
In 2018, the previous arena that occupied the spot, Arena Omsk, was found to be structurally deficient, and had to be demolished, which was completed in September 2019. It was stated that a new arena will be built at its place and is planning to open in September 2022 for the beginning of the 2022-23 KHL season. As a result of this, from 2018 until 2022, Avangard had to temporarily relocate to the Balashikha Arena in the outskirts of Moscow, nearly 2,700 kilometers (1,678 miles) away from Omsk.
In January 2020, construction on the arena began and finished in the summer of 2022. On September 27, 2022, the first hockey game was played at the new arena between Siberian Snipers and Omsk Hawks, with the former winning the game by a score of 7–2. On October 1, 2022, the first KHL game was played at G-Drive Arena between Avangard Omsk and their Siberian rivals, HC Sibir Novosibirsk. Sibir's Trevor Murphy scored the first goal in the arena's history, but Avangard came back to win the game 2–1. The arena was originally planned to host games for the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship, along with Sibir Arena in Novosibirsk, but, in April 2022, the IIHF stripped Russia's hosting rights while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) called for Russia and Belarus to be stripped of hosting rights to all international sporting events due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.