Islanders Stampede Corral Story

[greentree]

Originally Posted by Locke

Dear Lord, how old are you? You have to be collecting a pension! Do you have a cane? Do you need one?

Young enough to beat the bejeebers outta snot-faced punks, old enough not to care!

[Locke]

Originally Posted by greentree

Young enough to beat the bejeebers outta snot-faced punks, old enough not to care!

Ah! But you dont have a cane to hit me with! All I have to do is stay out of reach!

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by greentree

My earliest Corral experiences go back to the Scotty Munro/John Davidson/Mike Rogers/Danny Gare Calgary Centennials days and the SRO crowds. Then the Cowboys, then the Flames. Whenever possible I visit the old barn for a big dose of nostalgia. Wonderful place.

What is SRO?

[Keselke]

Played there many times,

The only thing they need to change is the CARPET on the dressing room floors, horrifying

[greentree]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

What is SRO?

Standing Room Only. Very common in those so very ancient Corral glory days.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by greentree

My earliest Corral experiences go back to the Scotty Munro/John Davidson/Mike Rogers/Danny Gare Calgary Centennials days and the SRO crowds. Then the Cowboys, then the Flames. Whenever possible I visit the old barn for a big dose of nostalgia. Wonderful place.

I have a mini-stick signed by all the Centennials.

One Centennials game I went to with Dad was cancelled with Victoria, because of a big brawl before the game.

Saw my first concert at The Corral - Rush in about 1983.

Saw the Sutter brothers go after the fans vs the Wranglers.

In Scouts, our team won the Ice Jamboree, pulling around a mini-chuckwagon. A person at the back had to hold a tow rope to keep the sled from crashing into the boards.

I remember seeing the Wrigley Midget tournament - it became Air Canada. There was a really good player from Calgary, but he only had one eye, and wasn't allowed to play in the NHL?



http://forum.calgarypuck.com/archive...p/t-22661.html

[GioforPM]

Saw my first couple concerts there as well, Rush and Styx (can't remember the order - it was the same summer). Max Webster opened up both times

[troutman]

For a while Wrangler fans used to taunt opposing goalies with large red foam hands - pointing at the goalie and chanting "sieve" after every goal. It really caught on, and became something to behold.

[Brewmaster]

After playing numerous beer league games in the Corral the past few years, I have to say the state they currently keep the arena in is a dump. The ice is always bad, the roof has leaked to the point where they cancelled our game 10 minutes before, and the dressing rooms are in bad shape. I love the history of the building, but it needs some money to even get on par with other city of Calgary arenas.

[Steve Bozek]

Originally Posted by Locke

Dear Lord, how old are you? You have to be collecting a pension! Do you have a cane? Do you need one?

Now you've made me feel really old. I can remember watching Lou Jankowski and the WHL Stampeders play in the Corral.
Don't have a cane, but I can club you with a ski pole.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Steve Bozek

I can remember watching Lou Jankowski

Bust.

[Steve Bozek]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Bust.

Careful there! You're talking about a little boy's hero - nearly 60 goals in one season with the Stampeders. But he didn't get much of a chance in the 6 team NHL.

[Dion]

Attended the 1974 Memorial Cup that was won by the Regina Pats. Of note there was no host team for the tournament at the time. It was round robin event featuring the Quebec Remparts, Regina Pats and the St. Catharines Black Hawks. SRO crowds for the whole tournament.



Attended an exhibition game between the WHL junior all star team that played the WHA allstar team who played the Russians in the 74 Summit series. The funny part was that the juniors came close to winning that game.



A high school friend of mine played in the 1976 Wrigley National Midget tournament that was held in the Corral. Being the host city they put together an allstar team of the best midget players in the city and called them the Calgary Spurs. They beat the Toronto Nationals in the final and won a trip to Czechoslovakia. One of the players, Pat Conacher went on to play in the NHL for 15 seasons and had a very brief 7 game say with the Calgary Flames in 1995-96.

Somewhere in a box is an autographed mini stick with all the players names on it.

A link to an archived news article on the tourney

http://news.google.com/newspapers?ni...pg=3444,103416

[Dion]

Originally Posted by troutman

For a while Wrangler fans used to taunt opposing goalies with large red foam hands - pointing at the goalie and chanting "sieve" after every goal. It really caught on, and became something to behold.

Remember the battles between Wranglers goalie Mike Vernon and Ken Wregget of the Lethbridge Broncos? IIRC coach John Chapman was always beaking off that his Wregget was a better goaltender than Vernon.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Steve Bozek

Careful there! You're talking about a little boy's hero - nearly 60 goals in one season with the Stampeders. But he didn't get much of a chance in the 6 team NHL.

[Buzzard]

Originally Posted by greentree

My earliest Corral experiences go back to the Scotty Munro/John Davidson/Mike Rogers/Danny Gare Calgary Centennials days and the SRO crowds. Then the Cowboys, then the Flames. Whenever possible I visit the old barn for a big dose of nostalgia. Wonderful place.

That'd be about a year before my earliest corral memories. I started going with my parents when Greg Neeld, Don Ashby, Jeff Bandura played for the the Centennials. I remember some awesome brawls between those guys and Mel Bridgman, Clark Gillies, Kim Clackson to name a few. Eric Bishop called those games on CFAC 960. I think he might of called the Cowboys too? Haha, another fun fact. Between periods, smokers lit up right in the stands. You weren't allowed during play though!

Ahh, the good ol' days.

[pylon]

Like many have said, awesome place to have your beer league games. Some cool memories in that old building. When I was a little kid that went to a handful of games in that building, I would fantasize about playing on that ice one day. However I didn't expect it to be as a member of the NCHL division 3 beer league Pylons, but needless to say, I still got to one way or another.

[Dion]

The famous WHA brawl between the Cowboys and the Nordiques

And, perhaps, no incident lives on as much as the bench-clearing brawl between the Cowboys and Quebec Nordiques in the second round of the 1976 playoffs.

Obviously, the ignition for the fisticuffs is a debate. Depending on which side of the affair you were on, Cowboys winger Rick Jodzio either crosschecked Nordiques star Marc Tardif or gave him a clean hit with horrible results.

“Rick got nailed with a bad situation,” recalled Butch Deadmarsh, the forward who was part of the Cowboys both seasons they called the Stampede Corral home. “Rick wasn’t a goon. He was a good skater and his job was to shadow Tardif, check him at every chance and hit him into the boards.”

To Deadmarsh, Jodzio came onto the ice for a line change and had to race to the far corner to get close to Tardif, thus the reason the hit happened at full speed

“Tardif had his head down when the puck came to him and Rick nailed him. He actually hit his head on the glass, and that’s why he was unconscious,” Deadmarsh said of the incident. “Tardif was a god in Quebec. They had (Curt) Brackenbury and some other tough guys on their team, too. And it was the old days, so both benches cleared.”

The brawl — which Cowboys goalie Smokey McLeod said was the “only time I was ever scared for my life” — resulted in Jodzio pleading guilty on criminal charges of assault and Calgary coach Joe Crozier being suspended.

Player memories of skiing and broken ankles.....

Being so close to the mountains, Ford recalls, meant an opportunity to go skiing, even though that was a no-no in their contracts.

“We used to see how fast we could get to the ski slopes after practising in the morning. One player said he did it in 50 minutes,” Ford said.

“I wasn’t going to go with him to see if that was true.

“Another time, a player hurt his ankle skiing and we knew if he was caught, his contract would be voided. So, he was on the ice early for practice next morning — somehow he got his foot in his skate — and before Joe was on the ice, he was in the corner lying down.

“We told Joe that he crashed into the boards. Sure enough, when they took an x-ray of his ankle, it was broken.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/10/13...ntial-wha-club

[browna]

Originally Posted by troutman

For a while Wrangler fans used to taunt opposing goalies with large red foam hands - pointing at the goalie and chanting "sieve" after every goal. It really caught on, and became something to behold.

As a young lad, I recall going to a few Wrangler games...always thought it odd that they turned off a bunch of lights (over the seating areas) at puck drop.

Never saw a Flames game there, recall being jealous that my dad went to a game.

At the Wrangler games, remember seeing someone score a goal in an intermission contest, from the other end, through a hole just the size of the puck....Maclin Ford or Metro Ford was the sponsor, and they won the use of a Ford Escort/Mercury Lynx for a year. Remember this was around 1984.

What I recall also were some foam fingers and taunting the goalie, but the chant was repeatedly "It's all your fault!".

Also, last game watched there was in the late 90's...there was a scheduling conflict with the Saddledome and the Hitmen were in the playoffs, so they had to play in the Corral for a game...a bunch of us got tickets just to watch a game in that place again. Glass rattling around at every hit, the high boards that you couldn't really jump in or out of the bench etc etc. Picture of the Queen was still up at the one end.

Played there a few times as well for shinny...hard to believe, even in the "kick save goalie" era, that NHL players agreed to play there and with those bare bones facilities and amenities like the dressing rooms.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Originally Posted by troutman

I have a mini-stick signed by all the Centennials.

I had a program signed by most of the Cents.

One Centennials game I went to with Dad was cancelled with Victoria, because of a big brawl before the game.

Saw a game where Scotty Munro went over the boards to confront the ref and the other coach followed. Crazy.

Saw my first concert at The Corral - Rush in about 1983.

Rush at the Corral was one of my earliest concert experiences as well. Late '70s. Prism may have opened for them.

In Scouts, our team won the Ice Jamboree, pulling around a mini-chuckwagon. A person at the back had to hold a tow rope to keep the sled from crashing into the boards.

Scout Ice Stampede! I steered one of those mini-chuckwagons! Shamefully, ours capsized.