Quote:
Originally Posted by Sainters7
Yeah, and they played the occasional game at the Corral that first year. Perhaps my then grade 7 brain is misremembering it as the first one (perhaps even the first exhibition game?), but I 100% saw the Hitmen play a game at the Corral that inaugural 1995-96 season.
I really want confirmation what game that actually was that year, as I've always remembered it that way, the internets haven't been much help thus far. Regardless, it was a good Corral memory.
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From Herald in October 6 1995, sounds like the Hitmen played their first 7 home games at the Corral because the Dome renos weren’t done. It opened October 25.
After seven home games, the Hitmen join their landlords, the Flames, in a refurbished Saddledome. Across from the Corral sits the fancy joint Western Hockey League president Ed Chynoweth refers to as the Taj Mahal. Some Saddledome tickets cost the equivalent of a return flight on the Concorde. When the spiffy new 'Dome reopens for hockey Oct. 25, a scoreboard the size of a Corral dressing room will flash TV replays on vast screens. In a members-only club, soft-spoken servers in tuxes will offer diners the creations of a master chef. Pretty cool if you dwell in a stratospheric tax bracket. But the 6,500-seat Corral remains a fries-and-popcorn, y'all-come kind of spot, steeped in atmosphere and soul. A rink rat's paradise, not Caesar's Palace. No private concourse. No bowing concierge. (Sources insist a too-tough Stampede Board lease helped drive out the Corral's last tenants, the junior Wranglers, in 1987.) Ex-Flames goaltender Mike Vernon continued to rave about supportive Corral crowds during his Wrangler days long after he became an NHL star. His last time through town, Gordie Howe took an affectionate look at the old place, and reminisced about a Wilf Carter concert he saw there. Similar arenas opened across Western Canada Victoria, New Westminster, Kamloops, Saskatoon after the Second World War. But few wear their years so jauntily The Corral opened on Boxing Day, 1950, featuring an innovative, free-span design no pillars, terrific sightlines. Dominion Bridge fashioned a network of steel trusses under the barrel roof, which is still admired by connoisseurs of steelwork. "If they ever dropped an H-bomb on Calgary," said Corral superintendent Don Stewart, "there'd be two buildings standing. The (Stampede) agriculture building and the Corral."