[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by boggledepot

It's a tragedy when rich business men play on ordinary people's passions, and sucker them in identifying themselves by: "Hockey is Canada's game; it's our national sport", and all the rest of that rhetorical bull. Many cannot fathom it, but professional hockey is a means of subverting, otherwise, intelligent people into building palaces for the super rich, so they can charge exorbitant amounts to the ones who built and paid for the palaces in the first place.

We look back on history and view the winter palace in Russia, and Versailles in France as symbols of government corruption--the royalty basking in the glory of these grandiose symbols of their rule, while ordinary citizens, the ones who paid for these palaces, starved, were left cold, and struggled to survive.

It is a little coincidental that Edmonton and St.Petersburg are the two largest northern cities in the world. In lieu of this geographic connection, I suggest the name of this downtown arena be the 'Winter Palace'.

You know? Edmonton, hockey, beautiful arena, winter, palace... Get it?

LOL overreact much? The average person will never even see a difference in their taxes from the building of these (Calgary will follow) arenas. News flash: The government misspends half of taxpayer money so if they are going to waste a large portion it may as well be on a world class facility that the city can used for concerts, briers, hockey, lacross, etc.