FLASHBACK: 45 Years Since Broncos' Home Opener

This year marks the 45^th birthday of the Enmax Centre.

The ground was broken on the facility in 1972 and took a couple of years to complete. Now, it was originally built to host the 1975 Canada Games.

But the hockey community obviously saw this as an opportunity to find a new home and maybe even a new league.

The Lethbridge Sugar Kings were one of the original Alberta Junior Hockey League teams, playing for about a decade before folding after the 1972-1973 season because they failed to post a $5,000 performance bond as required, according to the Lethbridge Herald in July 1973.

Now it was a tumultuous time leading up to that summer, as many questions lingered around the future of the franchise.

Rumours were running rampant that the team was being sold for months as the team struggled mightily on the ice, finishing last in the six-team AJHL.

In fact, one report in the Herald said the team was up for sale in May, but might have already been sold in a cloud of secrecy and even some murmurs of a lawsuit.

A couple of groups did come forward to keep the AJHL in Lethbridge and eventually, the Longhorns came out as the victors.

They stuck around for a couple of years, but were granted an indefinite leave of absence ahead of the 1974-1975 campaign as the Western Canadian Hockey League’s Lethbridge Broncos were introduced as a tenant of the new $4-million Canada Games Sportsplex.

The first game held there happened on October 6, 1974 with the largest crowd ever to witness a hockey game in Lethbridge taking in the festivities.

Featuring future NHLers Bryan Trottier, Ron Delorme and Brian Sutter, the home team delighted the 4,641 fans in attendance with a 5-1 win over the Regina Pats.

The defending Memorial Cup champions struck first with a goal from Dave Faulkner about five minutes into the game. But the Broncos would storm back with two goals in under a minute off the sticks of Phil Jensen and Trottier.

Sutter added the first insurance marker in the second before the icing on the cake was added by Greg Woods and John Lutz in the third.

As veteran sports editor Pat Sullivan remarked in his column: “they came, they saw and they conquered.”

He did go onto question whether fans would continue to support the team if they lost a few games.

The fans did keep coming as the team posted a 28-38-10 record in their inaugural season, good enough for second place in the East Division, losing in the first round of the playoffs to those same Regina Pats.

The Broncos stayed in the league until the end of the 1985-1986 season before heading to Swift Current.

But that’s another story for another day.