| (CP) - An official National Hockey League inquiry was put into the Calgary Flames continued home success while the team struggles on the road. Even though Calgary has won 3 straight games away from their friendly confines of the Saddledome, the Flames have won 27 more games at home than away, prompting the NHL to look into the situation. Pengrowth, as it turns out, has the ice surface built on a slight incline of the ice, which can modify the direction the ice tilts. This leaves the ice surface tipped one inch higher at one end, giving the Flames a downhill skating motion on home ice. Robert Finch is the investigator hired by the NHL to look into this. "We explored all the possibilities of the possibility of the Flames home vs. road success. We noticed while watching tapes that the opposing team seemed much slower than the Flames, even on rare occasions they were beat. As there was no way to test this theory, we decided to look at the structure of the Saddledome itself to go through the possibilities." "I found that the arena staff was very friendly and open, but they seemed to be downplaying the notion that a possibility could be found in building structure itself. We demanded to see the basement, and a complex series of gears and levers to be moved to actually move the ice surface." Finch told the Canadian Press. "Looking at the tapes after making this discovery, it became quite apparent the Flames were manipulating the ice surface." Finch submit his final report to the league the night of March 31st. Out of the shocking nature of this report, Gary Bettman immediately put the Calgary Flames under probation. He has not yet made a press statement, though the league did acknowledge dissapointment that this kind of cheating could occur in their league. "Of all the black eyes this sport could have accrued in the past month, this is one of the worst" an anonymous league official said. "this is something that can't be swept under the rug, this is an overwhelming conspiracy which has manipulated the current standings, the playoff run, etcetera etcetera." Looking for a suitable punishment will be difficult, especially since there is so little time before the National Hockey League begins the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Speculation at the moment is that the Flames home record could be stripped from the standings and the Flames banned from the National Hockey League for a year, as well as this year's playoffs. More importantly, the engineers in charge of the system could be subject to arrest. Saddledome staff did however admit that this was the only year that this cheating has taken place and the system was installed in the summer. The tilting of the ice did not occur for any concerts or WHL Calgary Hitmen games, and took 10 minutes to slowly raise one end of the ice to the other.
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