In my experience, whenever some group, company or organization wants to feature an image of hockey in their print or display media, they use the generic image below that seems to come from an actual game.
I'm very curious about the real origins of this image - where it was taken, who's in it it, etc - and how it became a de-facto image of hockey. Does anyone have any idea?
I'm almost positive that this team (in red) are the Spokane Chiefs from the WHL. The jerseys match exactly along with the pants. I looked through the leagues of CHL, WHL, QMJHL and AHL and these were the only jerseys that match.
As you can see by the first picture below, the stripes on the jersey match up exactly. If you look in the original photo (with the goalie) you can see a faint blue and white logo on the front of the the other players jersey, this matches the colors of the Cheifs logo.
(source: sportslogos.net)
As you can see from the 2nd photo, the 2 white and 1 red stripe down the leg matches the goalie as well.
As for who the player is? That is hard to figure out. The WHL only keeps roster records back to 1996. After going though all these rosters and looking at goalies who wore the number "1", I came up with this list.
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After further digging, I'm also almost positive that Spokane Chiefs were playing the Portland Winterhawks. I came to this conclusion by looking at the arenas that the teams in the WHL play in. On this certain game, the Chiefs were playing AWAY but wearing their HOME jerseys. Sometimes this happens in hockey (another question to be asked in the future).
The first reason why I came to this conclusion is the look of the arena. If you compare the given picture with the picture below of the Memorial Coliseum, the arena that the Portland Winterhawks play in, you will see many similarities.
You see the red outline that borders the main screen on the jumbotron. You also see the rectangular piece that wraps around the bottom on the jumbotron. Both of these features match the given picture above (although the top of the jumbotron in the given picture is cut off.
You also see the red and white banners that are hanging from the ceiling on the side of the rink. These match the banners in the given picture.
The next similarity that most people would miss is that both arenas have a unique "gap" in their roofs. A gap that extends up that shows exposed scaffolding.
Another similarity that most people would miss is a speaker that is hanging from the roof. If you look in the picture below, the speaker is located between the 3rd and 4th banner to the left of the jumbotron. This speaker is also visible in the picture provided on the left side of the picture in between banners.
Last but not least, the Portland Winterhawks AWAY uniforms are made up of an almost all white jersey and solid black pants, as you can see from the picture below. If you compare this jersey with the one you see of the opposing players in the picture provided, these jerseys match.
