Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
I would love to see the collective crapping of pants around here if Burke started making exploratory meetings with other cities about possible relocation. A lot of awful tough talk from people who were probably too young to understand the dread that this city felt about the possible loss of the hockey team back in the 90s. I would hate to see the city go through that again, but some of the fans obviously need to experience that wake up call. The Flames leave and you may never see another NHL hockey game in Alberta without going to Edmonton. That would be extremely tough to stomach.
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As a young fan at the time, getting 2-for-1 ticket vouchers on the side of 12 packs of Coke to watch the Flames lose in a half-empty Saddledome was the highlight of my month. When the ultimatum was made, I thought selling 14,000 season tickets was impossible, and do remember how worried (and convinced) many people were that the team was as good as gone. I was completely distraught.
Now, as a (somewhat) more mature and (somewhat) more thoughtful, level-headed adult, I realize NHL hockey is not as important as I once held it to be. Sure, going to games is fun, but if keeping the Flames in Calgary means using an astronomical amount of public funds to subsidize a few billionaires so they can build their cluster**** of an arena that only a small percentage of Calgarians will be able to afford to use, I'd quite happily give that privilege up.
That's not going to be a popular opinion on a website called "CalgaryPuck," but I don't think it's a ridiculous thing to say at all.