The game-day experience at Mosaic Place is about to change... drastically.

On Wednesday, the Moose Jaw Warriors announced a major investment – worth $520,000 – into the five-year-old downtown facility that will see new LED lighting installed as well as an upgraded sound system.

“This is a very exciting day for the hockey club, for the building and for our community,” said Alan Millar, Warriors’ General Manager.

“At the end of the day, for a community-owned team, it’s about giving back, it’s about investing in our community and most importantly in this regard, it’s about our fans.”

The Warriors went into the offseason with a goal to improve the experience of coming to their games at Mosaic Place and the organization believes that these upgrades will help them put together a top notch show on and off the ice.

“One thing that I’ve said during my time with the Warriors is that every opportunity that we have to put on as close to an NHL show as we could, we would always look at doing and making it a reality,” said Nyhagen.

“With the investment from the board and them putting the faith in us to be able to present something like this to fans that will rival the other WHL clubs for sure and will make our show exciting for fans coming here for the home opener and moving forward.”

The new lighting system will feature forty eight independent LED lights that will have the ability to be programmed and change colours, allowing the team to design light shows for their introduction as well as goals and much more.

“From an aspect of fan experience and engagement, this completely changes the game,” said Nyhagen. “It’s a challenge back to us now that light shows can get stale too after a while, but the good news with this system is that it’s fully programmable, so our whole intent is to never be stale.”

The LED lights are also much more energy efficient.

The JBL Powered Sound System will provide a big upgrade on the current system in place at Mosaic Place.

“It’s a system that is also going into the new Mosaic Stadium, it’s been used out at Craven as well,” said Nyhagen. “One thing you’ll notice in the new sound system is the richness and clarity of the sound, the one thing we’ve been lacking is clear, crisp and rich sound.”

The Warriors will be funding the upgrades entirely and installation has already begun after the team received approval from the City of Moose Jaw on Monday.

“As an organization, in terms of what we want to present, we felt that these were the two key areas to work with the City and on the building in making this investment,” said Millar. “These improvements were at the top of our list in making our franchise better.”

The upgrades are scheduled to be installed in time for the Warriors’ regular season home opener on Friday, Sept. 23 against the Brandon Wheat Kings.