When the Atlanta Flames were purchased by a group of Canadian businessmen in 1980 and moved to Calgary, the hope was that big-league hockey would fare better in western Canada than it did in the southeastern United States.

Yeah, the metro Calgary area had a population a third the size of metro Atlanta’s in 1980, but even as a smaller market the thought was that hockey had deeper roots in Alberta and so the passion of local fans would make up for the disparity in market size.

The good news is that it worked. For awhile, at least.

The Flames’ first season in town was met with a ton of local excitement, with lengthy lines to buy tickets for a hockey-mad fanbase. That fan fervour was met with on-ice success, and saw the Flames finally break through in the post-season, winning two rounds advancing to the league semi-finals where they lost to the Minnesota North Stars. The Flames established themselves as an exciting, talented hockey club and general manager Cliff Fletcher seemed hellbent on building the team into a champion, with the team making the Final in 1986 but suffering defeat at the hands of the powerhouse Montreal Canadiens.

Their first decade in Calgary culminated with back-to-back Presidents’ Trophy wins in 1987-88 and 1988-89, peaking with a Stanley Cup victory in a 1989 rematch with the Canadiens. Mission accomplished.

But the 1990s were a much different, more challenging time for the Flames.

The Flames are a business that pays its players in American dollars but takes most of its revenue in Canadian dollars. For much of the 1980s, player salaries were relatively low compared to revenues, so even if the Canadian exchange rate (relative to the U.S. dollar) began to slide, things were fine. Well, two things happened in the 1990s:

As a result, things were not fine for the Flames.

Typically, when teams win championships, there’s a desire to “keep the band together” and try to turn a single win into a dynasty. That was a challenge for the Flames, though, as many of their key players were looking for raises following the Cup win – and deservedly so based on what similar players were getting across the league.

That wasn’t something the Flames could do, though, and so gradually the 1989 championship team was dismantled:

Many of the Flames’ trades during the 1990s saw an established big name go out the door in exchange for younger players or draft picks. That pattern puts massive pressure on a team’s pro and amateur scouting teams to keep finding players that can mesh with the team and keep them competitive. Unfortunately, the Flames’ 1990s sell-off also coincided with their drafting results dipping, leading to a bit of a vicious cycle emerging: the team lost its stars, which hurt their marketability, but the team also wasn’t winning a lot, which continued to fuel a decline in fan interest – especially in the aftermath of the glory days of the 1980s and during a period of rising ticket prices.

Behind the scenes, the league was trying to do what they could to keep small market Canadian teams afloat – especially as Winnipeg and Quebec City lost their teams to American markets. During the 1994-95 lockout a salary cap was discussed, but not implemented, but a currency equalization plan was installed in 1995-96 as a way of using limited revenue sharing to help out the Canadian teams. But the challenges continued for the Flames, leading to several season ticket drives – most notably the “Save the Flames” campaign during the 2000 off-season.

“When I first got to Calgary, I think it was ’01, Calgary was a city where it’s oil and gas, a lot of transient people that move there for business but it’s not like a lot of people grew up in Calgary, like I’m a Flames fan,” said Jamie McLennan, who played for the Flames for three seasons. “You moved to the city and kind of embraced the team. There were times in that first year when we weren’t a playoff team, there’s 12,000 people in the stands and we’re playing Vancouver that night, half of them are Vancouver fans, or the Leafs came through. You name it, that’s kind of what it was.”

The Flames weren’t quite out of the woods when the 2003-04 season started, and even as the season wore on and it looked like playoffs were a possibility it was still pretty easy to get tickets to a game. But as the playoffs approached the Flames sold out three of their final four home games to close out the regular season, and ticket demand was large enough in the post-season that they re-opened the upper loge seating behind the press boxes. They sold out every available ticket for all 12 playoff games as fan interest in the team reached levels not seen in decades.

“Being a Canadian city and being Calgary and the love for the Flames has always been there,” said Chris Clark, a Flame between 1999 and 2005. “But it wasn’t as big as it is now, and I think that run really pushed it over the top and got people, even young kids and their parents, back into it where they were true ride-or-die, living each game, even during the regular season.”

The 2004-05 lockout expanded the existing revenue sharing schemes, but more importantly it created a salary cap system that put all teams – large and small markets, Canadian and American cities – on a level playing field.

Fan demand remained high when hockey returned in 2005-06, following the lockout, so the upper loge seating was made a permanent part of Saddledome operations. More importantly, the Flames reported sell-out attendance (via tickets distributed) for the next 368 home games coming out of the lockout. The first game reported below full capacity was Oct. 25, 2014.

The economics of the 1980s Flames were fuelled, in part, by fans that fell in love with their team upon their arrival and during their glory days. The lack of glory days to cling onto in the 1990s, along with some structural economic challenges in the league, made things a bit dicey for the hockey club for awhile. But the 2004 playoff run was incredibly important, as a new generation of fans fell in love with the team, while the lockout addressed several team-related structural issues.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t win,” said Mike Commodore, a blueliner on the 2003-04 Flames. “Tampa Bay won. I’ll still remember going to Olympic Plaza there, where we showed up there and that place, I’ve never seen anything like it, that place was… if anybody showed up they would’ve thought we’d won.”

“That ’04 run changed everything,” said McLennan. “The C of Red. The Red Mile. It just galvanized the fan base, galvanized the team. You go on a Cup run, all of a sudden that’s what people, they’re engaged in it, so that’s what they remember… So if you go through that with a fan base, that’s what people gravitate to. If they’ve gone through it, they crave that again. So I think if anything it was a turning point for the fan base to latch themselves to because they hadn’t had success since ’89.”

“I thought that was unbelievable,” said Clark. “I had never been a part of anything like that. If you can be a part of a championship run, or as far as we did, in a Canadian city, there’s nothing more special than that.”