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They liked the sightlines in Montreal.

“People are right on top of you,” Wilson said.

The Wings believed as great as the atmosphere is in Montreal, their new building will trump it.

“This building is tighter than Montreal,” Wilson said. “Even though it’s big and even though it has 20,000 seats, it’s going to feel as small as it could physically feel and make the experience as good for everyone as it could be.”

The objective with Little Caesars Arena is to create the gold standard of stadium experiences and they believe the timing of its construction offers up the perfect storm to make it so.

“(Joe Louis Arena’s) best features are the memories,” Wilson said of Detroit’s current home. “We were all there for a Stanley Cup game, or we were all there with our mom or our dad, or we took our kids.

“It was the last of a generation, so it doesn’t have any fan amenities, any experiences, or anything like that other than memories. It has tight seats, no legroom, restroom challenges, stuff like that. That was a disadvantage of being the last of a generation.

“The advantage is by being the last one, we’ve been able to go out to every building in the country and take everybody’s best or second-best idea. We’ve been to New York and Dallas and Chicago and Miami, or Pittsburgh with the latest new one.

“We’ve borrowed the best ideas from everybody, so hopefully when we open, this will be the best of the best of the best ideas in the country, all rolled into one place.”