The Flames played a home game in Tokyo in 1998

Since entering the National Hockey League as an expansion team back in 1972, the Calgary Flames have played a lot of hockey in their two home cities.

Since their inception in 1972, they’ve played 2,057 regular season home games. 308 were in Atlanta, all at the Omni. 1,736 have been in Calgary: 120 at the Stampede Corral, 1,615 at the Saddledome and one at McMahon Stadium.

That leaves three home games that were played at neutral sites.

These are their stories.

Did you know that the Flames played a home game in Tokyo, Japan’s Yogogi National Gymnasium on Oct. 9, 1998?

The background

The Flames playing games in Japan was the product of two related developments: Nagano, Japan being awarded the 1998 Winter Olympics, which happened in July 1991, and a 1995 agreement between the NHL, the NHLPA and the IOC that allowed NHL players to participate in those 1998 Olympics.

With an aim towards growing the game globally, and potentially getting a toehold in the potentially lucrative Japanese market in advance of the Olympics, the NHL scheduled a pair of regular season games in Tokyo, Japan to kick off the 1997-98 season in October. The initiative was cleverly titled “NHL GAME ONe Japan ’97.” There wasn’t a traditional hockey rink located in central Tokyo, so Yoyogi National Gymnasium, an adaptable facility originally built to house swimming events for the 1964 Summer Olympics, was chosen for the festivities.

The two teams selected for the first year were Anaheim and Vancouver, which made sense given their geographic location on the west coast (and both cities having large Asian immigrant communities). The Ducks/Canucks games were actually the first regular season NHL games held outside of North America.

Following the 1998 Olympics, the NHL opted to continue the Japanese experiment to kick off the 1998-99 season, with the Flames and the San Jose Sharks selected to participate.

The game

The Flames and the Sharks participated in “NHL GAME ONe Japan ’98,” with games on Oct. 9 and Oct. 10, 1998 to kick off the regular season. The Flames were designated the home team for the first game, and the Sharks hosted the second.

The opening game represented a ton of firsts:

• The Flames’ first-ever game outside of North America.
• The first-ever broadcast on the newly-launched CTV Sports Net cable channel.
• The Flames debut for newly-acquired goaltender Ken Wregget.
• The NHL debut for newly-drafted forward Rico Fata.
• The debut of the Flames’ black third jersey, featuring a fire-breathing horse (nicknamed “Blasty” by fans) as a logo.

The game was pretty decent by all accounts.

Joe Murphy opened the scoring on a Sharks power play late in the first period. But Jason Wiemer responded back for the Flames just 26 seconds later to send the game into the first intermission tied 1-1.

Midway through the second period, Valeri Bure scored to give the Flames a 2-1 lead.

The teams exchanged goals throughout the third period. Mike Rathje tied things for the Sharks 6:14 into the third frame. Three and a half minutes later, Andrew Cassels scored to give the Flames a 3-2 lead. But as the game began to near the end of regulation, Mike Ricci scored to tie the game at 3-3.

Neither team scored in overtime, and so it finished as a 3-3 tie. It was, weirdly enough, the third consecutive tie for the Flames in a neutral site home game.

Wregget made 22 saves in his Flames debut. Theo Fleury and Jarome Iginla combined for 10 shots, five apiece, but neither scored. Mike Vernon was in net for the Sharks.

The aftermath

The following day, the Flames beat the Sharks by a 5-3 score, with Fleury racking up a hat trick and five points. Derek Morris and Dave Roche had the non-Fleury Flames goals.

After taking 1999-2000 off, the NHL went back to Japan to open 2000-01, with Nashville and Pittsburgh having a pair of games at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan. The NHL’s Japanese experiment ended after that season.

One of the big reasons? Despite Japan being a pretty strong winter sports country, hockey never really caught on – even with the Olympics’ arrival. The domestic league, the Japan Ice Hockey League, declined in popularity after the Nagano games, dropping to five teams in 2002-03 (after having six for many years) and then down to four teams for 2003-04. It then folded entirely, with the four surviving teams merging into the Asian League Ice Hockey circuit in 2004-05. That league continues to this day with five Japanese teams and one from South Korea.