cities lacked a facility that produced artificial ice at the time. And with 26,000 square feet of ice surface at the Garden, was nearly 50 feet longer than the modern-day rinks in the National Hockey League (NHL) and had state-of-the-art refrigeration and resurfacing technology. On January 24, 1899, the Garden hosted its first ice hockey game in a match between the Pittsburgh Athletic Club and Western University of Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh). According to Total Hockey, the official encyclopedia of the NHL, Pittsburgh was one of the first cities in North America to lure amateur Canadian players for what was a standard $30 a week stipend and a local job in the early 1900s. The manager of a Canadian team returned from a trip to the Garden in 1902, according to an account in Total Hockey, and gave the following description to the Toronto Globe: "Pittsburgh is hockey crazy. Over 10,000 turned out for our three games there. The general admission being 35 cents and 75 cents for a box seat . . . the Pittsburgh rink is a dream . . . What a marvellous place it is." The teams of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, and the Pittsburgh Professionals of the International Professional Hockey League, played their games at the Garden up until 1909. The Garden's artificial ice surface helped make Pittsburgh a professional hockey pioneer, much the way the region had given birth to the first professional American football players in the 1890s. Players in the WPHL were paid to play hockey before 1904, but that is when the first professional league officially formed. The Pittsburgh Professionals joined Canadian Soo, Michigan Soo, Calumet Miners, and the Portage Lakes Hockey Club to form the IPHL in 1904. However, after the 1906–07 season, other professional leagues began popping up and the IPHL disbanded, while the WPHL was revived until 1909. During this era, Garnet Sixsmith, who played on several Pittsburgh teams, once scored 11 goals in a game at the Garden. His 11 goals is considered to be a record for the arena. Olympics, Yellow Jackets and Pirates: 1910–1936 From 1910 to 1915, hockey and ice skating at the Garden were replaced by roller skating, which was experiencing a wave of popularity. Hockey was brought back in the winter of 1915–16, when the amateur Duquesne Garden hockey team (which later played under the banner of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association