The Olympia, and other good old NHL rinks

[FrozenPuck 0]

This article at Hockey.com brought back some great memories for me:

New NHL arenas lack the memories, ghosts

[irishtemper14+25 11]

yea i remember i played in the leafs gardens before they moved out of it

[joshy207 156]

Those old rinks all had character. Very few of the newer rinks have anything that makes them special or unique. No organ, no balcony, no smaller surface... the Boston Garden's boards started tapering inward at the blue lines, the old rink in Vancouver had almost square corners... everything is so cookie-cutter today. You see the same thing in the community rinks, half the time you can't even tell what rink you're in because so many of them are identical. I hate it.

[spyder 0]

i liked torontos almost vertical cliff seating behind the goals, there was no railings whatsoever, scared the s*** out of me.

[joshy207 156]

I was watching Center Ice at the bar last night (no volume so I couldn't hear it) and they were showing clips from some of the old barns, mostly O-6 arenas. They showed some of the video from the last game at the Forum as well as pics of empty rinks. A few of them had such steep seating, even the top-row fans were right on top of the action. That's another thing that's missing from today's arenas.