100 Things Flames Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

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Contents

Foreword by Theoren Fleury

1. May 25, 1989

2. The Move North

3. The Corral: First Home

4. Beating Philly

5. Something…Missing

6. The Magic Man

7. Badger Bob

8. Like Oil and Water

9. The Silver Fox

10. The 50-Goal Swede

11. It’s Eva, Dahling…

12. Lanny

13. The Shot

14. The Kid from the Kitchen

15. The Ol’ Potlicker

16. The Great White Shark

17. Hometown Hero

18. The So-Called Slump

19. The Best Deadline-Day Deal

20. The Most Famous Goal

21. Thank You, Flames

22. That’s Suter, Not Sutter

23. Gretzky’s Rash

24. The Mario All-Star Game

25. Joe Who? (Naturally)

26. Snowstorm in Jersey

27. He Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog

28. In His Own Little World

29. Theo Sound Bites

30. Crispie

31. Beast

32. Killer

33. Tim Hunter: Tough Guy

34. Paul Bunyan from Bemidji

35. The Toughest Series

36. Sealed with a Kiss

37. Ready to Win

38. Pep

39. A Soviet Legend

40. The Friendship Tour

41. Yeah, Baby!

42. The Battle

43. Battle Quotes

44. The Dynasty Dies

45. The Risebrough Era

46. Trading Gilmour

47. Gary Roberts

48. Harley Hotchkiss

49. Top 10 Individual Seasons

50. A Dozen Defining Deals

51. Top 10 Drafts

52. The Epic Series

53. Toon Time

54. Those Fickle Hockey Gods

55. Trading Joe

56. Iginla: The Greatest Flame

57. The Age of Austerity

58. Two That Got Away

59. It’s Not the Size of the Bull…

60. Hello, Hockey Fans

61. Coatesy

62. Trivia Time

63. Draft Disappointments

64. Pssst! Santa’s a Flames Fan. Pass It On.

65. Giving Back

66. Land of the Rising Sun

67. Young Guns

68. Ultimatum

69. Ten Memorable Goals

70. Hall Monitoring

71. Hart Breaker

72. By the Numbers

73. All-Time All-Stars

74. Mr. Popularity

75. All Ducks on Deck!

76. Rockin’ Red Socks

77. Darryl

78. The Tunnel of Death

78. The Tunnel of Death

80. The 2004 Run

81. OT Hero

82. The Heritage Classic

83. Dealing Dion

84. Family Ties

85. Iginla Exits

86. Iginla Returns

87. The Flood of 2013

88. Gio

89. Sean Monahan

90. Burke

91. Remembering Monty

92. Johnny Hockey

93. Take the Tour

94. Bob Hartley: Populist

95. The New Architect

96. Renaissance

97. The Big League Experience and Then Some

98. Red Mile Revived

99. CalgaryNEXT

100. Where Are They Now?

Acknowledgments

Sources

About the Author

Foreword by Theoren Fleury

When I was I living in Russell, Manitoba, I remember we played against Sheldon and Troy Kennedy in this tournament, and the winning team got tickets to a Winnipeg Jets game. And it just happened to be that famous game between Colorado and Winnipeg—whoever lost got the lower pick in the draft. We won our game, and I managed to have enough money to buy a program at the old Winnipeg Arena. So I had my program, and I ran down to where the Rockies were coming off the ice and I got Lanny McDonald’s autograph. I was 12 years old.

Eleven years later we were both carrying the Stanley Cup around the Montreal Forum. And at my first training camp, who was I sitting next to in the main locker room? Lanny. So, looking back, that game when I was a kid might’ve been some foreshadowing of my future relationship with him.

Being in Calgary when I started out was essential for my development. To have the type of teammates I had at the time made all the difference in the world. Nobody thought I’d play one game in the National Hockey League, so I’ll be forever grateful. Scout Ian McKenzie saw something in me no one else did. And the rest is history.

In that first camp, I needed to make the organization believe I could be a full-time NHL player. I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. I remember one day playing against Otts (Joel Otto), in one of the scrimmages, and him trying to beat the crap out of me. I remember Jim Peplinski giving me one of his well-placed elbows. But I left that training camp and went back to Moose Jaw with a lot more belief that I could actually do it.

I’ll never forget playing a game that camp against the Canadian Olympic team, looking to my left, and there was John Tonelli—I’d grown up a huge Islanders fan, when they were winning all those Cups—and looking to my right and there was Lanny McDonald—and Lanny’s…well, Lanny. An iconic figure. And I’m thinking, This is so cool!

In Calgary, not only were you expected to be a great hockey player, you were expected to be a citizen of Calgary, involved in the community, to give back to the charities. That’s one thing that sets Calgary apart from any other community I’ve been around: the degree of giving back. With the team, that came right from the top—from Harley Hotchkiss, Doc and B.J. Seaman. They set the tone, set the standards.

I’m a Western Canadian kid. I love Calgary. I still live in the city. I love the people in the city. I’ve transitioned into another part of my life, but the lessons I learned while I was playing, while I was a Calgary Flame, haven’t changed. The people in the city really take care of us, and that’s really cool, too.

Calgary lives and dies with the team. So it’s nice to see the old Saddledome alive again and people excited about the team again. They’re definitely moving in the right direction. With guys such as Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan and T.J. Brodie and Sam Bennett, they’ve got a good core of players who are going to be around a long time.

It’s a great organization. I played in other organizations, but I’ll always consider myself a Calgary Flame. Of course. I can’t remember how many rounds went by in the draft. Twenty? And they gave me a chance when no one else would. For that, I’ll forever be loyal, forever be grateful. I have a flaming C tattooed on my heart.

—Theoren Fleury

February 5, 2016

1. May 25, 1989

All these years later, Lanny McDonald still hasn’t sat down in front of his flat-screen TV and watched Game 6 from start to finish. Oh, he’s often seen highlights. Snippets. Bits and pieces.

The images never change: His younger self, peeling away, arms outstretched, after cashing a diagonal Joe Nieuwendyk pass beyond Montreal netminder Patrick Roy at 4:24 of the second period to establish a 2–1 Calgary Flames lead. The indomitable Doug Gilmour slotting into an empty Montreal net—Roy at the end of the Habs bench—at 18:57 of the third to seal the deal. The gutted but gracious crowd at the fabled old Montreal Forum staying put to salute the only invaders ever to lift the big silver chalice on their hallowed ice. McDonald’s own hands wrapped around the Stanley Cup, at the center of the commemorative keepsake on-ice photo, flanked by GM Cliff Fletcher and Nieuwendyk, goaltender Mike Vernon popping up just behind him.

I could probably play the majority of the game, shift by shift, if I just closed my eyes, the emotional fulcrum of the Calgary Flames’ only Stanley Cup–winning march said more than a quarter century later.

They’d done it. Broken the reign of the dynastic Edmonton Oilers, their northern tormentors for so long. Exorcised the demons. After battling through a near loss in round one versus Vancouver, followed by a sweep of the L.A. Kings, the Flames had ousted the Chicago Blackhawks in five games to reach the Finals against hockey’s most storied, revered franchise, the Montreal Canadiens. The Canadiens had Roy, Chris Chelios at his snarly best, the sleek Mats Naslund up front, and Pat Burns behind the bench.

It had been a difficult season for McDonald, the Flames’ most beloved icon, as a new era dawned in Calgary. The man with the mustache had been shuffled in and out of the lineup during 82 games and then through the playoffs. He’d sat out Game 5’s 3–2 Flames win that had put the Campbell Conference champions one night away from the ultimate prize: the Stanley Cup. Given the opponent, the venue, and the stakes, these Flames needed that certain something only Lanny McDonald’s presence in the lineup could provide.

[Assistant coach] Doug Risebrough called me into the trainers’ room, recalled McDonald. "He didn’t even say it in those words—‘You’re in the lineup.’ All he said was, ‘Do you know where you’ve got to be in all situations?’ That was his way of telling me.

I’ll never forget, I’m looking over [Risebrough’s] shoulder and there’s Bearcat [trainer Jim Murray] kinda peeking around the corner—[Risebrough had] kicked him out of the room—and he let out a whoop, then goes into the room to tell the rest of the players. And I heard a little bit of a cheer. So it was pretty cool.

In a series so evenly matched, the karma of a 16-year unfulfilled quest by one of the modern game’s classiest players proved to be the difference. We kept saying in the dressing room, ‘Let’s win this for Lanny,’ said Vernon amidst the celebrations that night.

Echoed head coach Terry Crisp: He is the kind of leader words cannot describe. We hoped that by putting him back in, we’d get a lift for this team, not only emotionally in the dressing room but physically on the ice. And that’s what we got.

Game 6 followed the tight style of its five predecessors—none decided by more than two goals. Checking winger Colin Patterson opened scoring, the only goal of the first period. After the nefarious Claude Lemieux equalized early in the second stanza, McDonald broke out with Nieuwendyk and fleet Swedish left winger Hakan Loob. There was less chance of legendary Dunn’s famous deli taking Montreal smoked meat off the menu than the old pro McDonald missing the net on that chance.

Because of the emotional resonance of that goal, people still assume it was the game winner. Sorry. Officially, that went to Gilmour, who swatted his first of the game and 10th of the playoffs out of the air at 11:02 of the third during a power play for a 3–1 Calgary advantage. Habs defenseman Rick Green, of all people, pulled one back before Gilmour hit the empty net.

Storybook? said McDonald—who would announce his retirement later that summer—in the cramped visiting quarters at the Forum. I don’t know if it’s storybook or not. But it certainly is a hell of a way to write the final chapter. This is the most powerful feeling ever in hockey.

Asked about how it felt to finally lift Lord Stanley’s chalice, he said, You know, there isn’t an awful lot to it. It’s nice to hold. It’s the nicest feeling in the world. You feel like you could carry it forever. And I think I will. In the imaginations of Calgarians, and Flames fans everyone, he always has.

The city of oil and stampeding has enjoyed its share of sporting highlights over the years—an Olympic Games in 1988, seven Grey Cup championships in the Canadian Football League—but May 25, 1989, remains special, apart, unique.

For Crisp, a two-time Cup champion as a player in Philadelphia, there was a special kind of satisfaction. He’d taken the best assemblage of talent and won with it. That’s why I admire Scotty Bowman so much, explained Crisp. "Yeah, he had thoroughbreds, but I’ll tell ya, as a coach it’s often harder to coach thoroughbreds than Mennonite plow horses. It’s easy to get the Mennonite plow horses up and working. When you have thoroughbreds, they all want to be first to the starting gate. They all want to be on the power play. They all want the ice time.

"Try keeping them happy. They’re all good, but you can’t put ’em all on the ice at once. Hell, the hockey, the Xs and Os, is easy. It’s the people management. When do you tap a guy, when do you pull him in, when do you turn him loose?"

The players would eventually disperse, torn apart by a shifting economic landscape in the NHL and the passage of time, but together they forged an exceptional season, a tremendous playoff run that bonds them together even now.

As a member of the ultraexclusive Triple Gold Club—reserved for those who’ve won a Stanley Cup, a World Championship, and an Olympic gold medal—right winger Hakan Loob is uniquely qualified to judge which carries the most luster. Oh, replied the silky Swede without hesitation a few years back. "The Stanley Cup. Not even close. Take out a knife or a pistol…I’ll never change my mind about that. It’s special.

Ask guys who have never won it. They’d pay, lie, cheat, or steal—whatever they had to—to lift it. Cut off their arm. People visit the Hockey Hall of Fame, and you see these kids and their dads just staring at it. It’s the Stanley Cup. It’s magic.

2. The Move North

They arrived from the deep American South. From the land of Peachtree Street, soft summer breezes rustling through resplendent azaleas, and wonderful gabled mansions fronted by towering columns. From Scarlett and Rhett and Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn land.

The Atlanta Flames were born in 1971, along with the New York Islanders, in response to the threat posed by the fledgling World Hockey Association. Their competitive history could, at best, be considered checkered, qualifying for the playoffs in six of their eight seasons but never advancing past the first round, and winning only two games during that stretch.

Hockey at their home, the Omni, certainly had its moments. It had the Rebel, a superfan outfitted in Confederate garb, charging up and down the aisles waving a Confederate flag. It had the Painted Lady, a busty miss who’d squeeze into low-cut dresses, paint a flaming A across her ample bosom, and primp behind the opposition net during warm-ups. For a while it had the legendary Bernie Boom Boom Geoffrion—flamboyant, outspoken—as coach (His voice, wrote one Atlanta sportswriter, was like rich, thick French onion soup).

There were individual player highlights: two Calder Trophy winners in Eric Vail (1974–75) and Willi Plett (1975–76), a Lady Byng Memorial Trophy recipient in Bob MacMillan (1978–79), and a 50-goal scorer in Guy Chouinard (1978–79).

Hockey as a sport was as foreign to Atlanta as swimsuits to Alaska, but over their existence the Flames did develop a hard-core group of fans. The problem was that group wasn’t nearly large enough, often enough. Attendance peaked in the team’s second year, averaging 14,161 fans per game. But that number quickly began to erode. Relocation rumors surfaced as early as 1976, with players and local politicians buying season tickets to help stanch the bleeding.

First, reminisced winger Tom Lysiak a decade after the move north (which eventually happened in 1980), you’d get your Falcons and Braves season tickets. Then basketball. So we were fourth. If you had enough money and enough time, there we were.

In retrospect, general manager Cliff Fletcher felt three key factors worked against the team’s viability: the location of the Omni, the size of the Omni, and a lack of revenue from a local TV deal. The absence of luxury suites in the area, becoming a huge money earner for teams housed in newer buildings, also didn’t help. Neither did the lack of postseason success. There was no urgency to be a winner, said Al MacNeil, the final coach in Atlanta Flames history.

In what would turn out to be their swan-song season in Atlanta, the team averaged only 10,024 fans per game. Owner Tom Cousins, rumored to have lost $12 million over the eight years of the franchise’s existence, announced his intention to sell. In stepped two prominent Calgary businessmen, Doc and B. J. Seaman. They quickly enlisted another friend, Harley Hotchkiss. Working closely with Alberta premier Peter Lougheed and the provincial government, they began their quest. At the time, Calgary had its sights set on hosting the 1988 Winter Olympics. To do that, a new, state-of-the-art arena had to be built.

All the stars seemed to be in alignment. Then in stepped Vancouver-based wheeler-dealer Nelson Skalbania. Skalbania flew his daughter down to Atlanta and, using an up-front deal involving cash, scooped the Flames out from under the noses of the Calgary group for $16 million. Within a week after bringing a pair of business associates—Normie Kwong and Norm Green—on board, Skalbania, without the necessary cash to move forward properly and looking for quick payday, sold 49 percent of the team to the Calgary group. By July of the next year, the Calgary business consortium had it all.

Originally the ownership breakdown went this way: Hotchkiss, the Seaman brothers, Green, and ski hill operator Ralph Scurfield owned 18 percent apiece, and Kwong, a former Canadian Football League star, owned 10 percent. A solid, dedicated foundation. The Flames—as the Calgary Flames—were off and running.

For the players from Atlanta, forced to uproot, the relocation had to be jarring. What did they miss about Atlanta? Well, reasoned rugged winger Plett, the weather is nice [in Atlanta]. No silly snow to mess with.

There was a lot of grumbling initially, recalled defenseman Paul Reinhart. But I remember Alan Eagleson calling me and saying, ‘Paul, give it a chance. This will be the best move you’ve ever made.’ Turns out, Eagleson was right. About this, at any rate.

Reinhart, like many of the Atlanta Flames, traveled to Calgary to begin the new chapter but would be gone when the team finally hit pay dirt.

For the franchise, though, the shift was a positive boon from the get-go. They were immediately accepted and adored by the Calgary community, playing in front of sellout crowds in first the tiny Corral and then the sumptuous Olympic Saddledome.

When the Flames finally lifted the Stanley Cup nine years after clearing out of the Deep South, the old-timers from Atlanta were watching. Kinda like my ex-wife winning the lottery, is how center Curt Bennett, who retired the year the franchise moved, described the feeling. Excited, but…

3. The Corral: First Home

It held only 8,700 souls. Each seat for each game cost $25. Such was the clamor to attend, standing-room-only places were all of 18 inches apart. The first year, 10,000 full- and part-time season tickets were sold. If ever a place epitomized the old supply-and-demand rule, the Calgary (now Stampede) Corral was it.

In 1980 the NHL arrived in southern Alberta with the Calgary Flames, and with it the chance to see Wayne Gretzky, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, Marcel Dionne, and the rest of the league’s glittering stars playing for visiting teams. The outcry for tickets, predictably, was noisy and far-reaching.

When the Corral opened three decades earlier, in 1950, at the then-staggering cost of $1.25 million to replace the old Victoria Arena and house the Calgary Stampeders Pacific Coast League pro hockey club, it instantly became the largest arena west of Toronto. A litany of famous entertainers and acts—Duke Ellington, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong—performed there over the years. By the time the Flames relocated from Atlanta and got around to tenancy, though, the onetime showpiece seemed outdated, cramped, a relic removed from another, distant time.

The Corral had already once been deemed insufficient by the NHL, in 1977, forcing the World Hockey Association Calgary Cowboys to fold rather than try to become part of the WHA-NHL merger that welcomed Winnipeg, Hartford, and Quebec City into the established circuit. But the International Olympic Committee had thrown Calgary and its NHL dreams a lifeline. Soon to be seen going up across the street from the Corral, on the Stampede Grounds—its shadow growing ever larger—was the Olympic Saddledome, a $97.7 million state-of-the-art arena tied to the city’s successful bid for the 1988 Winter Olympic Games.

If in 1983 the Saddledome arrived with all the attending bells and whistles, its predecessor—the Corral—still possessed a unique, quirky charm. It was barely adequate, remembered coach Al MacNeil. "The psychological thing was that everything was too small except the boards, which were four or five inches higher than any other building in the league.

We had a big team. The other club looked at us and said, ‘Well, we’re going to get killed in here!’ It kinda took the edge off their interest in playing that night.

Inside the cozy, claustrophobic—visiting teams might use the term oppressive—confines of the Corral, the Flames flourished. Over three seasons housed there, they compiled a rather impressive 66–28–26 record, including an amazing first-year record of 25–5–10.

It was like a gladiator pit, recalled right winger Lanny McDonald, who scored many of his single-season franchise-record 66 goals there during the 1982–83 season, the year before the team move to the Saddledome. You’d walk out from the dressing room right through the crowd, it seemed, and onto the ice. Just an amazing place to play. There was such a great atmosphere in that old barn.

The Saddledome (above) saw plenty of action over the years, but it never held the same mystique as the Corral.

The benches were small, narrow and, believe it or not, tiered. The boards, again, were higher than NHL standard. So high, joked winger Jim Peplinski, Theoren Fleury never would’ve made the NHL playing in that building. He might’ve killed himself jumping from the bench onto the ice.

The Flames players of that era remember the experience fondly. Peplinski recalls signing so many autographs for one fan named Danny that the young man presented him with a bottle of English Leather cologne as a thank-you gift.

Our dressing room was on the other side of the lobby, so at the end of every period and the beginning of every period, we’d have to walk through the crowd, recalled defenseman Bob Murdoch. "They had cardboard down on the floor so we didn’t wreck the edges of our skates.

If you played a horseshit game, fans were yelling and screaming at you. You go out for the warm-up, you come back. You go out for the first period, you come back. You’re walking the gauntlet six times at night. And there was no hiding. Everybody had access to you while they were buying their hot dogs and popcorn.

Trainer Bearcat Murray’s room had nothing more than a chair and training table. The Flames dressing room was Spartan, the size of a water closet. (Just big enough, recalled Peplinski, for Bobby MacMillan to have a smoke.) Four showers, one toilet, two urinals.

Those boards, sighed Murray. Rigid, about shoulder height. Guys that got hammered into those boards, it was like pushing them into a cement wall. Which it was, because the seats behind it were cement, right up against the boards. They had no give. Today, you can see boards rattling all the way down, one end to the other. I can remember there were a lot of injuries, mostly shoulder injuries, from that.

Yet the players of that era enjoyed their brief tenure there immensely. There’s a photo outside the dressing room we used to use, said Peplinski. It’s still there, of the 30th birthday party for the Corral. A bunch of us are in it, and I distinctly remember Guy Chouinard singing that day—‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Co-raaaaaaaal.’ And then he turns to me and says: ‘What am I doing?’

The opening of the Saddledome was understandably met with much fanfare. It allowed 19,000 people to watch in person the team that had become a city’s passion. Those 18-inch standing-room-only spots were a thing of the past.

In March 2016 the Calgary Stampede announced that plans to sacrifice the 66-year-old facility were being drawn up in a half-billion-dollar expansion at Stampede Park that would double the size of the nearby BMO Center.

A lot of memories are stored in that old barn. When we left for the Saddledome, it was time, recalled winger Jamie Hislop. But I did enjoy the years at the Corral, for sure. It was such a huge advantage for us. Darker than any NHL building. Small, the fans—and they were loud—right on top of you. High boards so the ice surface seemed small. I’m sure teams coming in there took a first look and said to themselves, ‘What is this?’

4. Beating Philly

There were easier places to venture into to wage a winner-take-all showdown back in the day. The Black Hole of Calcutta, for instance. Or the Marquis de Sade’s personal playroom.

Going into the Spectrum back then, mused Jim Peplinski, "was like that moment in Gladiator, remember, where the guys are walking into the Colosseum and a few of them are peeing their pants? You get the picture. It was an intimidating place to play, to put it mildly."

That’s where Game 7 of the Calgary Flames–Philadelphia Flyers second-round playoff series of 1981 would be contested. Not that the love affair between the first-season Flames and their new city hadn’t already taken root, of course, but a series triumph against the big, bad Flyers would amp up the relationship to a whole different octave.

We had a very, very good team at that time, said Calgary’s key defenseman of the era, Paul Reinhart. "They were in their heyday—Clarke, Barber, Leach, Kenny Linseman, the Rat. Not the Broad Street Bullies of old, I suppose, but pretty darn close.

"People forget, though, that we were the biggest team in the league that year—Willi Plett, Guy Chouinard, Eric Vail, Pep, Kenny Houston, Phil Russell—and were physically able to stand up to the Flyers.

Beyond all the crap, and it had its share of that, that was an intense, intense series with an awful lot of great hockey.

The Flames had never won a playoff series during their years in Atlanta but began their Canadian account by sweeping aside Chicago in the minimum three games in the spring of 1981.

Then it was on to the waiting Flyers, which was a vastly different proposition. Sure, Calgary had gone 2–2 against the two-time Stanley Cup champions during the seasonal series and trailed them by only five points (97 to 92) in the Patrick Division standings during the regular campaign. Still, this was a Philly team that had reached the Finals the year before while piecing together a record 35-game unbeaten streak. So when the upstart Flames were thumped 4–0 in the opener, all seemed to be on course with the world. But they stormed back for 5–4, 2–1, and 5–4 wins to jump out to a 3–1 series lead.

Then we got overconfident, if you can believe it, laughed Peplinski. "I think we were reasonably satisfied after beating Chicago. Not sure we expected to beat Philadelphia, especially with four games at the Spectrum.

But after we were up 3–1 we got really quite cocky. It’s amazing how after only six days you can go from ‘Let’s not embarrass ourselves’ to ‘We’ve got this in the bag.’

The favored Flyers rebounded for 9–4 and