It was the dawn of a new decade.
And it just happened to coincide with Calgary’s ascent into the big leagues.
The NHL arrived in 1980, and a year later, the Olympics were awarded to the Stampede City. But amid all the excitement, it became clear the city needed a new, modern arena.
And while the 'Dome was a cornerstone of those 1988 Winter Games, the Flames' arrival in town provided significant momentum for civic leaders to pull up their socks and make progress on the development of Calgary's new, state-of-the-art facility.
But first, the city needed a team.
And one of Calgary's most beloved homegrown NHL products was one of the first people to hear that the relocation of the Atlanta Flames was a done deal.
Tim Hunter was drafted by Atlanta in 1979. After his WHL campaign with the Seattle Breakers concluded in the spring of 1980, Hunter went to Georgia to get surgery on his knee.
“I went to David Poile’s house (Poile was the Flames Assistant GM at the time) the morning after my surgery, he said ‘I want to have you over to my house for breakfast,’” Hunter recalled. “So I get to David Poile’s house, he says ‘I’ve got to jump on a phone call, I’ll be just a couple minutes.’ He goes into his office, and I’m sitting in the living room, he comes out and says ‘I’ve got some great news for ya. We just sold the team to a group in Calgary and we’re moving the Flames to Calgary. You’re virtually the first person to know, other than the group that’s buying and the NHL.’
“I was like ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, that is so cool!’ To get that news, to be from Calgary. When I was drafted by the Atlanta Flames, my Dad said ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go to a game in Atlanta,’ ‘cause there was no other team in the NHL further away than Atlanta is from Calgary.”
But those early days in the Corral were an important part of the Flames' history in Alberta. Kent Nilsson set a franchise record with 131 points during that inaugural 1980-81 campaign, as the club came within two wins of reaching the Stanley Cup Final.
Hunter recalls the cozy confines of the sub-7,000 seat structure offered a unique experience for fans and players alike during those early days.
“The smoking section was up top where the standing room was, and you had to walk from the dressing room through the crowd to go out on the ice,” said the longtime Flames forward. “People are patting you on the back, you’re looking at your friends in the eye when you’re going out to battle the Oilers or whoever you were playing.
“It was really intimate, and it was fun.”
Those Flames teams helped set the tone for the club’s two trips to the Stanley Cup Finals that decade, with the team winning hockey’s ultimate prize in May of 1989. A group of players for the city to fall in love with, starting with those early days at the Corral.
“Cliff Fletcher (the late Flames GM, and architect of the 1989 Stanley Cup squad) would say ‘Tim, this team has a lot of characters, but not a lot of character, and we’re going to change that,’” Hunter reminisced.
And change they did. As did the city they played for.
A big-league team. An emerging big-league city.
But behind the scenes, the work was just beginning on their future home.
Andrew Tankard is a partner at GEC Architecture, the Calgary-based firm tasked with designing the arena in the 1980s as well as its subsequent renovations in 1995 and 2013.
And while the building was designed to meet NHL and Olympic standards, Tankard figures, too, that the entire process helped place an exclamation point on the city’s development at the time.
“The Flames moving to Calgary, and getting an NHL team was an important step in the community's growth, the city's growth,” he said. “The Olympics, of course, was another one.
“When we look at our drawings from its construction, it was just called the Olympic Coliseum. People sometimes think we must have had this idea to make a building that looks like a saddle, but it actually was the other way around. The building came first, the name came after.”
But where would it go? In addition to the finalized site on the Stampede grounds, civic leaders looked at several options. Downtown, and a parcel of land north of the Calgary Zoo was both eyed as potential landing spots, with a site in Airdrie even drawing some consideration.
On March 3, 1981, Calgary Mayor Ralph Klein and council voted 11-4 to key on on the Stampede Park site on which the building stands today. Less than five months later, construction began.
And on September 30 of that year, the final piece of the puzzle was confirmed, when International Olympic Committee delegates voted to award Calgary - and Canada - the 1988 Winter Games over competing bids from Sweden and Italy.
IOC delegates were impressed, too, that the 'Dome was already under construction when the final votes on hosting the Games were held in West Germany.
"The fact that this facility was already being built added credibility to (Calgary's) bid and proved to be a positive factor in demonstrating Calgary's commitment to hosting the Games," the official XV Winter Olympic Games report states.
The easy work was done. The hard work was only beginning, as Calgary’s transformation into an NHL and Olympic city hit full stride.
But for those at the centre of it all - that era provided a lifetime's worth of memories and milestones.
For Hunter, those seasons, those battles, but also the sense of pride he felt as a Calgarian, was a decade he'll never forget.
“As a fan, it was really special taking my family to the Olympics in 1988,” said Hunter. “My daughter Kelsey seeing figure skating and being at the Olympics - we were on the road - but my wife took her down every night to the Olympic Plaza.
“Just to be part of all that, with the growth of Calgary in those days was very special.”
