Here are five unusual oddities about the "Temples of Hockey"...its arenas...to pique your curiosity.

Have fun!!



The Philadelphia Arena (1920-1983)



Since the NHL's first major expansion in 1967, for a variety of reasons a surprising number of the teams in the league have played one or more regular season home games in cities other than the one that they represent by name. (One team, in fact, never played a game in its "home" city.) With the exception of the few promotional "neutral" site games (such as the Kings and Anaheim in London this year), name the teams, where they played their "vagabond" regular season games, and why did they play them there?



The first NHL team to play a regularly scheduled home game in a city other than the one it represented after the league doubled in size from six to twelve teams in 1967 was the expansion Los Angeles Kings. With their new building, The Forum, not yet ready, the Kings played their first ever game in October, 1967, a win over the Philadelphia Flyers, at the Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, CA. After a brief time there, the club moved games at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena where they remained until The Forum opened on December 30, 1967. Although located in Los Angeles County, the building is technically in the City of Inglewood. The Kings did not actually play in the City of Los Angeles again until they moved to their current home, Staples Center, thirty-two years later in 1999.



Late in the 1967-68 season the Philadelphia Flyers became like King Zharko Stepanowicz and his wife, Queen Rachel, in the 1978 Hollywood movie "King of the Gypsies", the first year expansion Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers were veritable vagabonds as they ended up needing five different buildings to play their ten game season series against each other in 1967-68. With the Kings' new building, The Forum, still under construction at season's start, they instead hosted the Flyers on their first of five visits to Southern California on October 14, 1967, at the Long Beach Arena with a 4-2 Kings' victory. The two clubs met for the second time at The Spectrum in Philadelphia on November 26th with the Flyers downing the Kings in that match, 7-3. The next two games between the clubs both took place back in California in two more rinks with the Flyers earning a shutout against the Kings at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena on December 8th by a 3-0 score, and then shut them out again, 2-0, three weeks later as the helped their hosts open The Forum in Inglewood on December 30th thus making the fourth different building in which the two clubs had played each other in thier first four meetings. After the Flyers waxed the Kings' apparently creaky machine, 9-1, the next night back at the Spectrum to celebrate New Year's Eve, it looked as if the five remaining games of the season series (and for many years to come) would all be played in these two brand new rinks. But when the Spectrum was unexpectedly forced to close its doors for the final month of the season when a portion of its roof was blown off in a wind storm on March 1st, 1968, (and just a few hours after the Flyers and Kings had played there the night before) the final east coast meeting between the West Division rivals scheduled for March 14th was moveded at Le Coliseé in Quebec City, the home of the Flyers' AHL Quebec Aces farm club, with future Hall of Fame goalies Bernie Parent and Terry Sawchuk each earning shutouts in a 0-0 tie.



The Washington Capitals did not actually play a game in Washington, D.C. for the first twenty-three years of their existance, but instead spent 1974 to 1997 in Landover, MD, playing in the Capital Centre (later US Air Arena) until moving to the MCI (now Verizon) Center located just a few blocks from the White House in downtown Washington, DC, in Decmber, 1997, when they finally goat a chance to play and actual "home" game for the first time!



When the roof of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Hartford Civic Center collapsed during a heavy snowstorm in the early morning of January 18, 1978, the building was the home of the then WHA New England Whalers where it had played since January 11, 1975. (Prior to moving the Hartford, the Whalers had also played home games at the Boston Arena, Boston Garden, and The Big E Coliseum in West Springfield, MA, since becoming a charter member of the WHA in 1972.) With the arena closed, the team was forced to move its games 27 miles due North to the Springfield Civic Center, then also the home of the AHL Springfield Indians. The club was still playing there in 1979 when the WHA folded and four of its member clubs joined the NHL including the Whalers which then became the NHL Hartford Whalers. The Hartford club continued to play in Springfield until the heavily renovated Hartford Civic Center was finally re-opened on January 17, 1980, just one day short of two years since its closure.



The Whalers played its games there for the next seventeen years until team owner Peter Karmanos announced in March 1997, that the club would have to leave Connecticut at the end of that season because they were unable to negotiate a construction and lease package for a new arena in Hartford. The club's new home would be in Raleigh, North Carolina, where it would become the Carolina Hurricanes and play in the new Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena (now called the RBC Center). The only problem with this, however, is that ground for the building would not be broken until the following July. With no lease in Hartford, while the new building in Raleigh was going up the 'Canes had to play its first two seasons in Carolina seventy-five miles west of Raleigh at the 21,000-seat Greensboro Coliseum, then the home of the AHL Carolina Monarchs. After "marking time" in Greensboro for two years, the Hurricanes finally settled in Raleigh in 1999 -- and seven years later brought the Stanley Cup there as well. Including the five buildings which it called "home" in during seven seasons in the WHA, the Whalers/Hurricanes franchise has thus had seven arenas as it "home ice" since 1972!



The NHL Cleveland Barons never actually played a game in Cleveland during its two season in the NHL (1976-78), but instead called the Richfield Coliseum home. That building -- which "lived" for only twenty years (1974-94) -- was located some twenty miles south of Cleveland in Richfield, OH, and was actually almost as close to Akron.



The Richfield Coliseum

The Ottawa Senators did play in Ottawa, but only for the first four seasons (1992-96) of its existance when the they called the Ottawa Civic Center home and actually played under the stands of a football stadium. In 1996 the club moved to Kanata, Ontario, some fifteen miles southwest of the city, to play in their new arena currently called ScotiaBank Place.



Like the Senators and Hurricanes, The San José Sharks also had to wait a couple of years for their arena in San José to be completed and thus played their first two seasons (1991-93) at the Cow Palace in Daly City located just south of San Francisco. The club moved to their permanant home in San José, now known as the HP Pavillion, in 1993.



In addition to these examples, there were also the few seasons when each team played a "home" game at a neutral site.



What NHL arena once served as home ice for three different professional hockey teams in the same season?



For two seasons -- 1972-74 -- the venerable Boston Garden was the home to three professional hockey teams: the NHL Boston Bruins, AHL Boston Braves, and WHA New England Whalers making for those two years probably the buisiest pro hockey rink in history.



"Boston Garden: once the busiest building in hockey."



Since 1920, how many Presidents of the United States were nominated one or more times at Conventions held in buildings that have also been the home arenas to professional hockey teams, who were these Chief Executives, where were they nominated, and what hockey teams also called these buildings home?



Eleven different men who have served as President of the United States since 1920 were nominated for the office one or more times in buildings that were also at one time or another the home of one or more professional hockey teams. They are:

1920 Warren G. Harding: Chicago, IL--Chicago Coliseum--Chicago Black Hawks (NHL)

1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt: Chicago, IL--Chicago Stadium--Chicago Black Hawks (NHL)

1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt: Philladelphia, PA--Convention Hall--Philadelphia Blazers (WHA); Philadelphia Firebirds (NAHL, AHL)

1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt: Chicago, IL--Chicago Stadium--Chicago Black Hawks (NHL)

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt: Chicago, IL--Chicago Stadium---Chicago Black Hawks (NHL)

1948 Harry S Truman: Philladelphia, PA--Convention Hall--Philadelphia Blazers (WHA); Philadelphia Firebirds (NAHL, AHL)

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower: Chicago, IL--International Amphitheatre--Chicago Cougars (WHA)

1956 Dwight D. Eisenhower: San Francisco, CA (Daly City)--Cow Palace--SF Sharks, SF Spiders (IHL), SF Seals (WHL), San José Sharks (NHL)

1960 John F. Kennedy: Los Angeles--Los Angele Memorial Sports Arena--LA Blades (WHL; PHL), LA Kings (Kings)

1964 Lyndon B. Johnson: Atlantic City, NJ--Convention Hall (now Boardwalk Hall)--Atlantic City Seagulls (EAHL), Boardwalk Bullies (ECHL)

1976 Jimmy Carter: New York City--Madison Square Garden--New York Rangers (NHL), New York Golden Blades (WHA)

1980 Ronald Reagan: Detroit--Joe Louis Arena--Detroit Red Wings (NHL)

1984 Ronald Reagan: Dallas--Reunion Arena--Dalla Stars (NHL)

1992 William J. Clinton: New York City--Madison Square Garden--New York Rangers (NHL), New York Golden Blades (WHA)

1996 William J. Clinton: Chicago, IL--United Center--Chicago Blackhawks (NHL)

2000 George W. Bush: Philadelphia, PA--Wachovia (then First Union) Center--Philadelphia Flyers (NHL), Philadelphia Phantoms (AHL)

2004 George W. Bush: New York City--Madison Square Garden--New York Rangers (NHL), New York Golden Blades (WHA)

*Although never "elected" President, Gerald R. Ford was nominated in 1976 at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, MO, which was briefly the home of the NHL Kansas City Scouts (1974-76), and later the CHL Kansas City Blues (1976-77) IHL Kansas City Blades (1999-2000), UHL Kansas City Outlaws (2004-05).



All of these Presidents were nominated in hockey rinks.



What did the Montreal Forum, Quebec Coliseé, Boston Garden, and Winnipeg Arena have unusually and uniquely in common among NHL arenas during their days as the homes to the Canadiens, Nordiques, Bruins, and Jets?



While NHL rules now require that the player benches be located on one side of the rink and the penalty boxes on the other, in these four older buildings the penalty boxes were instead located on the same side of the ice as the home teams' player benches. This of course gave the home club a big advantage when a penalty expired as all the player had to do was step out of the bax and right in to his own benach while visiting players had to skate across the rink to reach theirs. None of these four rinks are still the the homes of NHL teams, of course, The Forum is now the home of shops, restaurants, and multiplex movie theaters, and the Boston Garden and Winnipeg Arena are not even standing any longer.



The Forum, Le Coliseé, the Winnipeg Arena, & the Boston Garden



What did the Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, and "The Aud" in Buffalo have unusually and uniquely in common among NHL arenas during their days as the homes to the NHL Bruins, Blackhawks, and Sabres?



The regulation ice surface in the NHL is 200' x 75', but the rinks in these three former NHL buildings were all shorter then 200 feet. The ice in Buffalo was 196', in Boston it was 191', and Chicago had the shortest at 188' - a full dozen feet under regulation length. As with the buildings with the penalty boxes on the same side as the home teams' benches, these rinks no longer are in the NHL with the Boston Garden and Chicago Stadium long ago the victims of the wrecking ball...and the "Aud" is expected to follow them soon.



The Chicago Stadium and The "Aud"