History
When the arena opened on November 10, 1974, it was known as Northlands Coliseum to house the World Hockey Association Oilers, named after the nonprofit organization that still owns the arena today. Then it became the Edmonton Coliseum in 1994, and Skyreach Centre in 1998, before it changed to its current name during the middle of the 2003–04 NHL season when its naming rights were purchased by the Rexall medicine company, a subsidiary of Katz Group Canada; incidentally, the Katz Group now owns the Oilers and the Oil Kings through a subsidiary.
The arena was used to host games in the 1981 and 1984 Canada Cup hockey tournaments, including Game 2 of the 1984 finals between Canada and Sweden. In the 1995 World Junior Championships, which were held in various cities and towns throughout Alberta, Edmonton Coliseum was the site of several games, including Canada's 6–3 victory over Finland on New Year's Day. The arena was one of the venues for the 2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.
The venue was the site of several Commonwealth Games sports in 1978, and part of Universiade (the World University Games) in 1983. It also hosted the World Wrestling Entertainment 2004 Backlash pay per view, and the CHL Top Prospects Game in 2008. Annual events include the Canadian Finals Rodeo and the Christian Conference, YC Alberta.
Before the 2007/08 season started, the Oilers dressing room was renovated for $3.5 million. The state-of-art room is now wider with a new medical room, lounge, bar, video room, weight room as well as other new facilities. Just after the entrance to the dressing room is a cubicle with 5 replica Stanley Cups in it that has all the names of the past Oilers who won cups with the team. Next to the 5 replicas is an empty space symbolizing that there is always room for another.
Read more about this topic: Rexall Place
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—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)