Tale of the tee: Flying Puck
Our new Flying Puck Tee, arriving in late October 2022
It’s an iconic photo, shot on April 20, 1956 at Hershey Sports Arena and featuring Bill Haley & His Comets.
The view is from the back of the stage looking out at 8,000 spectators there to witness a concert lineup that also included the Platters, the Drifters, Bo Diddley, LaVern Baker, the Teenagers, among others.
The 45-city tour was billed as, “The Biggest Rock and Roll Show of 1956,” and Haley was the biggest name in rock. From late 1954 to late 1956, he and his band, founded in 1952 in Chester, Pa., had nine Top 20 singles in the United States, three in the Top 10, and one No. 1, “Rock Around the Clock.”
In June 1956, the photo ran in Look magazine (Liz Taylor was on the cover), illustrating a story titled, “The great rock ‘n’ roll controversy.”
But what struck me most about the photo when I looked at it again recently has nothing to do with that show or music at all. It’s what you see if you look at the top of the photo, which is to say closer to the barrel-shaped roof of the arena (but cropped out of the Look version of the image).
It’s a sign hanging over the rink that wasn’t aimed at concertgoers but rather at fans of the arena’s permanent tenant, the Hershey Bears hockey club of the American Hockey League.
Here’s what the sign said, in capital letters, in black ink against a white background:
SPECTATORS ARE WARNED OF DANGER FROM A FLYING PUCK. INJURY MAY RESULT FROM FAILURE TO PROTECT YOURSELF.
That sign is the inspiration behind Stay’s new Flying Puck Tee.
Besides the sign verbiage, our design acknowledges that the arena, renamed Hersheypark Arena in 1972, opened in 1936 and is affectionately known as “The Old Barn.”
Close-up of our new Flying Puck Tee design
Tragedy in Ohio
Protective netting wouldn’t arrive in professional hockey rinks for nearly a half-century after that Bill Haley performance in Hershey, after a tragic event in Columbus, Ohio.
At a National Hockey League game on March 16, 2002, a puck deflected into the stands at Nationwide Arena and struck Brittanie Cecil in the left temple. Cecil, whose ticket to the game was an early birthday present, died two days later, two days shy of turning 14.
Starting that fall, at the beginning of their 2002-03 seasons, the NHL and AHL required protective netting in all of their arenas. That fall, the Hershey Bears began their first season in their new home, Giant Center.
It wasn’t until 2014 — 58 years after that Bill Haley concert — that Hersheypark Arena would get protective netting of its own, repurposed when Giant Center got new netting.
Of course, the netting makes rinks safer, but it’s only at the ends, leaving most of the seating area unprotected. Now used for college, junior and youth hockey, the Old Barn still features abbreviated versions of that sign from 1956, warning of possible injury from flying pucks but without the blame-the-victim tone of “from failure to protect yourself” as it appeared on the original.
Rock and roll will never die. And flying pucks will remain dangerous.