Maybe? I don't remember offhand how many hundreds of millions of dollars this arena is going to cost. They can afford some retractable bleachers. This lounge adds some space for a stage, but really, not much.... Your explanation doesn't quite make sense to me, but I don't have a better one. It does seem like they really just want a special spot to wine and dine some alums, but I can't see how that would be so popular they decide to build in this section. I really don't know.
Just to try and articulate why I don't like this design: A lot of the fun of live sports is the crowd. People are loud, they yell at the goalie, they bang on the glass. You can sit close with a bunch of strangers but have something automatically in common. For hockey specifically, sitting that close at one end can be a lot of fun. Pucks fly at the glass, and players get hit in the boards right in front of you. I feel like putting a lounge at ice level really sucks a lot of that fun out of the atmosphere. It will be a quiet, sedate zone right where a lot of the fan energy should be. It will be the spot with some of the most exciting views of the game, but wasted on people who are barely paying attention. This feels like taking away space that really should be for college students and giving it to some boring old dudes (I say this as a boring old dude).
