It's October 29 and hockey season is already 3 weeks old. I guess the warm temperatures don't matter to true hockey fans.

Central Pennsylvania has it's own hockey tradition, the Hershey Bears have been a part of the American Hockey League since 1936 and have earned eight Calder Cup trophies in the last 70 years, including the 2005-2006 season. They play now in the new Giant Center, but played for almost 70 years in the venerable HersheyPark Arena built in 1936. That has been the site of lot of memories, including Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point performance for the Philadelphia Warriors back in the 60's. While the place seated about 7500 or 8000 for basketball, hundreds of thousands of locals claim they were there that night.

Oh, the title above? Originally the team was named the B'ars (Hershey Bars, get it?) when it started as an amateur team, but that was considered too commercial for use in newspapers so it was changed to Bears at the start of the 1936 season.

See Hershey Bears for the history of the Hershey Bears.