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Quickies

Did you know …

that Fox Television, worried that U.S. fans would find it difficult to follow the action in NHL hockey, introduced the FoxTrax puck at the league’s All-Star Game on January 20, 1996? Wherever the puck moved along the ice, it was tailed by an oscillating blue dot on television screens. When a shot was fired, the puck developed a red trail. Most hockey fans, especially Canadians, were outraged at Fox’s simplistic gimmick. Happily, FoxTrax never caught on despite the network’s dogged promotion of it. Fox finally retired its “innovation” prior to the 1998–99 season.

Why is Calgary’s hockey team called the “Flames”?

The “Flames” have not always been a Calgary hockey team. They started out in Atlanta during the second wave of NHL expansion in 1972, where the name “Flames” was chosen to remember the torching of the city in 1864 by Union troops, led by General William Tecumseh Sherman, during their long march through the South near the end of the Civil War. When the team moved to Calgary in 1980, the name was kept in honour of Calgary’s ties to oil.