Before the 2006 NHL already had a long tradition of an exhibition games in other countries. The League already played in many European countries, Russia and even in Japan, where some NHL teams opened regular season in 1997, 1998 and 2000. But on September 23, 2006 the New York Rangers and Florida Panthers played a pre-season exhibition game in the most unusual country in the NHL history. They travelled to San Juan in Puerto Rico, a place where ice is usually something to cool your drinks and no rinks existed before 2004.
Howewer, the organized hockey appeared in this Caribbean country in 2004 along with building the Aguadilla Ice Skating Rink. This rink was opened in the beachfront, so unlikely place as for an ice hockey. But there were some enthusiastic players, people started to create teams and Hockey Puerto Rico even contacted the IIHF in case to create their own ice hockey federation. Hockey equipment in Puerto Rico was bad accessible, the first years player even didn't have helmets, and the hockey they played was in an old-time style without checking. Games were usually played 3-on-3 because there weren't enough players in the first years of the Puerto Rican hockey.
The exhibition game of Rangers and Panthers in San Juan became a notable moment for all the hockey community in Puerto Rico. This pre-season NHL game was played at the Jose Miguel Agrelot Coliseum, the biggest entertainment indoor arena on the island, opened in 2004. Its capacity is 16500 seats, even more than Bell MTS Place (15294 seats, Winnipeg Jets) and Barclays Center (15813 seats, New York Islanders) of the NHL.
Unfortunately, we can't say this game was successeful, not a lot tickets were sold, but they gave an opportunity to see hockey to children from a poor families. Many of them haven't even heard about ice hockey before.
New York Rangers won this game 3-2, they won the 3rd pre-season game in a row of three played for that moment. Florida Panthers had an opposite statistics, this lost was the 4th in four games already played.
Both teams had a Puerto Rican flag on their jerseys for this exhibition game. It's the most unusual patch ever on the NHL uniform, for sure.
The only short video of this historical game:
Comments