^ I just stumbled across a hidden YouTube gem: footage of a game in which these jerseys were actually worn.
I honestly can't tell whether the video is slowed down or not. If not, that's the slowest professional hockey I've ever seen.
I think that's the actual game speed. The announcer's commentary sounds like a natural tempo and he's more or less keeping up with the play.
We have guys in lower C that skate faster than that. I'm not even exaggerating. Whether they belong in lower C is another matter, but we have them.
I'm guessing the skates had cement in them?
Any guesses on what arena that might be? Kind of looks like a county expo center. I imagine a lot of wrestling matches and monster truck events took place there.
OK, this was a deep dive that involved way more edits than I care to admit, but I have your answer.
From the scoreboard, we can tell this was a home game. The announcer mentions a player named August George, who played for this team for one season ('70-'71). This would confirm that the date on the video is accurate.
The confusing part is the team was founded in 1967 as the Salem Rebels and played in nearby Salem, but changed their name to the Roanoke Valley Rebels in 1970 before ending up in Roanoke. However, their arena in Roanoke opened in 1971; it was originally called the Roanoke Civic Center and is now known as the Berglund Center. After looking at some
UVA archives of a local TV station, I'm pretty sure they played previous seasons in the same building as the one in this clip. This tells me the team played the '70-'71 season in Salem, but changed its name in anticipation of its pending move to Roanoke in 1971. That means this building is the Salem Civic Center, then known as the Salem-Roanoke Valley Civic Center.
As it happens, this is the building where Borat did this: