Hockey Hothouse: Part 2
(1947) The NHL’s studded with stars from Winnipeg’s Olympic rink where players get frostbite and the cash intake is sometimes nil.
Here is the second part of a two-part story that Herb Manning wrote in 1947 for MacLean’s Magazine about the historic Olympic Rink in Winnipeg. Enjoy!
Hockey at 30 Below
The operation of this productive hockey foundry has always been conducted at a more or less substantial loss to most of the parties concerned, the rink owners, club sponsors and to the Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association, which annually pours much more money into the till for ice rentals and training facilities than it ever gets back in play-off receipts. Only in three years since it was built did the Olympic manage to fight its way out of the red, in 1930-31-32, and the escape then was so narrow that directors confessed they reached for their cheque books from habit.
The most lucrative single game the Barn ever presented was a junior league play-off in 1938 between St. Boniface Seals, who ultimately won the Dominion championship, and Brandon Elks. The game grossed the hardly staggering sum of $1,400.
The smallest gate was at a game in 1936 between another pair of junior teams, Elmwood and Kildonan, when the temperature inside the rink hit 30 below zero and the total attendance was the members of both teams, their coaches, the timekeeper, referee and two sports writers. This number was further reduced when one of the Kildonan players, sallying into enemy territory, suddenly discovered he had frozen his ears and peremptorily dropped his stick with a yelp, quit the ice and went home. The two sports writers gave up the game in favor of a Quebec heater. Coach Cece Browne of the Elmwoods directed tactics by messenger from the dressing room during the later stages of the game.
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