pontcanna
09-18-2011, 11:29 AM
A Royal return to the WHL
The newest Western Hockey League franchise is back in town after a 17-year absence
BY CLEVE DHEENSAW, TIMES COLONIST SEPTEMBER 18, 2011 8:22 AM
The Chilliwack Bruins jersey hanging forlornly in an office at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, now merely a collectible from the Victoria Royals' previous five-season existence in the Fraser Valley, speaks of the impermanence of sports franchises.
You don't have to tell Victoria hockey fans. They are painfully aware of that fact after having lost a Western Hockey League franchise themselves when the Victoria Cougars were abruptly uprooted in 1994, after 23 seasons in Victoria, and moved to Prince George under the cover of that hectic summer when most of the attention locally was diverted to hosting the Commonwealth Games.
Now the WHL returns to the capital this week for the first time in 17 years, when the Royals open against the Vancouver Giants on Friday at the PNE Pacific Coliseum before hosting the Giants the next night in the home curtain-raiser at the Memorial Centre.
Snubbed by the WHL for the nearly two decades since, this is a bittersweet return for some and a let-bygones-be-bygones relief for others.
Pretty much everybody in the hockey world knew this moment was eventually coming for Victoria.
That it took so long to return the WHL to one of the most attractive markets in Western Canada was the big surprise.
Potential WHL owners would look at the sad state of the old Memorial Arena. So a new rink came into being - after a typically torturous Victoria process, taking several years to do what most other cities get done far more expeditiously. But this market was still overlooked for a WHL franchise when the new Memorial Centre opened in 2005.
Arena operator RG Properties of Vancouver needed an anchor tenant and was forced to go the minor-professional route in the ECHL. The Victoria Salmon Kings era - diverting in that Bull Durham fashion of minor-pro sports - lasted seven years.
"We didn't put a time line on it [getting a WHL franchise]," said Dave Dakers, president of RG Properties sports and entertainment division, and also president of the Royals.
"The ECHL was a good option considering our situation at the time. We needed to find the best opportunity for the WHL and take the right steps."
It almost came with the new rink.
"We were at the final documentation phase to move Tri City [Americans of the WHL] here in 2004. But for a number of reasons that deal came apart," said Dakers.
Ironically, elements of that package have come full circle seven years later.
The WHL managed to salvage the Americans franchise and keep it in Tri City, Washington, while granting its disgruntled former ownership a new franchise in Chilliwack.
And now the Bruins are the Royals.
Hockey can be a funny world. "In one sense, we got the same team we almost had in 2004," noted Dakers. "Hockey is a small community."
It is also a world of distinctive pools of interest. While it can be argued that Americans "get" minor-pro leagues such as the ECHL - where many WHL grads end up after junior, by the way - Canadians don't as readily.
The great Canadian comfort zone in hockey below the NHL is junior, and the three major-junior leagues in particular, of which the WHL is one. Even the other form of junior - the Junior A product such as the B.C. Hockey League - is considered a bit foreign to Canadian tastes because the best of those players are being groomed for the U.S. collegiate NCAA.
So now back in our comfort zone, the WHL should be an easy sell in Victoria, right?
"It's safe to say it is an easier sell," said Dakers, picking his words carefully.
"People understand the product."
Season-ticket sales for the Royals are approaching the 3,000 plateau, while the Salmon Kings in their best days pushed around 2,400 before dipping dramatically in the waning seasons.
In those dwindling days of the Salmon Kings, fans couldn't help but notice that several rink-board spaces and arena backlit signs were left empty as the sell became tougher. Now Dakers said the back-lit signs that encircle the seating bowl are sold out and only three rink-board spaces remain. He added that "75 to 80 per cent" of luxury suites are now sold.
Another thing that will help the bottom line is that the Salmon Kings were pros who got paid and stayed in apartments the team had to pay for. The Royals are juniors and are billeted by local host families and basically only receive spending stipends. The Salmon Kings flew to away games while the Royals will take the bus.
Dakers said the annual operating budget for the Salmon Kings was $3 million and that the Royals should be "15 to 20 per cent less."
"It was the air travel that mostly made the ECHL more expensive [than operating in the WHL]," he said.
So fans might think RG Properties and Royals owner Graham Lee of Vancouver, who reportedly paid $5.5 million for the Bruins franchise, would be laughing all the way to his financial institution.
But although the WHL is easier to market on the Island than the ECHL, and brings fans here back into the familiar Canadian hockey orbit of majorjunior, Dakers said it is still a process that will take many years.
"Getting to be part of the fabric of a community is a lot of hard work and that takes more than just changing the letters of the leagues," he said.
"It's not quite as simple as saying people here 'get' the WHL a lot easier than they 'got' the ECHL. A lot of things still have to occur."
Dakers used the example of Kelowna, where RG Properties operates Prospera Place (but unlike in Victoria with the Royals, doesn't own the WHL main tenant Rockets).
"WHL franchises are all about peaks and valleys," he said.
"The franchise came to Kelowna after struggling in Tacoma and then struggled again in Kelowna during four seasons in the old rink and even for the first two years in the new building [Prospera Place]. Since then, it's been seven seasons of sold-out games. But it wasn't an overnight success. It never is."
There's a lesson in that for Victoria, Dakers warned. "People are expecting us [Royals] to overwhelm the market," he said.
"But that's not necessarily going to occur. Granted, it's a lot easier to say to people we're in the Western Hockey League as opposed to the East Coast Hockey League. But if Kelowna is an example, it's going to be one fan, one group, at a time over a certain period before we can finally sit back and say: 'Wow, this is really going amazingly.' "
It's still, however, rather startling to hear Dakers say he would be happy in the initial Royals season for an average attendance of 4,000 - a prediction which seems on the light side considering that nearly 3,000 season tickets have been sold. The Salmon Kings used to routinely announce more than that, although on many occasions there were obviously fewer people in the building than announced.
"I'm talking actual 4,000 people in the seats [for Royals games]," said Dakers, of his initial goal.
However it's received, the WHL promises a different look at the Memorial Centre than the last seven seasons of ECHL.
"They are all the same guys - the Salmon Kings ECHLers were all former major-junior players [and former NCAA players] - but when you get the players while they are still in junior [16 to 20 years old] there's a certain innocence," said Dakers.
"These are young guys trying to figure it out. The world is still their oyster."
Dakers addressed a sentiment popular among a certain circle of Victoria hockey fans that the American Hockey League, the next rung up from the ECHL on the pro ladder, was the better move for Victoria than the WHL.
"We had a number of chances to go to the AHL but none of them made business sense, not even with the Canucks," said Dakers.
"The AHL is not significantly different than the ECHL. If we had gotten the Canucks' [AHL team, which instead went to Chicago from Winnipeg over the summer], there would have been instant interest but would the fans have come out every night? These things are not always quite so obvious. The Canucks are extremely big right now, but what if they don't win as much in five years' time? When you looked at the longterm viability, it is the WHL that always made the most sense for this market."
So as John Sebastian sang in the folk-rock theme song to that 1970s sitcom about a teacher named Kotter - welcome back. Come to think of it, the Cougars were in their first WHL decade in Victoria during that era of disco balls, platform shoes and fans driving to the games at the old Memorial Arena in really big Oldsmobiles.
Then the house lights dimmed on major-junior here in the mid1990s. After 17 years of hockey trials, and more than a few tribulations for patient Island fans of the major-junior brand, the WHL is finally back on Blanshard.
The newest Western Hockey League franchise is back in town after a 17-year absence
BY CLEVE DHEENSAW, TIMES COLONIST SEPTEMBER 18, 2011 8:22 AM
The Chilliwack Bruins jersey hanging forlornly in an office at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, now merely a collectible from the Victoria Royals' previous five-season existence in the Fraser Valley, speaks of the impermanence of sports franchises.
You don't have to tell Victoria hockey fans. They are painfully aware of that fact after having lost a Western Hockey League franchise themselves when the Victoria Cougars were abruptly uprooted in 1994, after 23 seasons in Victoria, and moved to Prince George under the cover of that hectic summer when most of the attention locally was diverted to hosting the Commonwealth Games.
Now the WHL returns to the capital this week for the first time in 17 years, when the Royals open against the Vancouver Giants on Friday at the PNE Pacific Coliseum before hosting the Giants the next night in the home curtain-raiser at the Memorial Centre.
Snubbed by the WHL for the nearly two decades since, this is a bittersweet return for some and a let-bygones-be-bygones relief for others.
Pretty much everybody in the hockey world knew this moment was eventually coming for Victoria.
That it took so long to return the WHL to one of the most attractive markets in Western Canada was the big surprise.
Potential WHL owners would look at the sad state of the old Memorial Arena. So a new rink came into being - after a typically torturous Victoria process, taking several years to do what most other cities get done far more expeditiously. But this market was still overlooked for a WHL franchise when the new Memorial Centre opened in 2005.
Arena operator RG Properties of Vancouver needed an anchor tenant and was forced to go the minor-professional route in the ECHL. The Victoria Salmon Kings era - diverting in that Bull Durham fashion of minor-pro sports - lasted seven years.
"We didn't put a time line on it [getting a WHL franchise]," said Dave Dakers, president of RG Properties sports and entertainment division, and also president of the Royals.
"The ECHL was a good option considering our situation at the time. We needed to find the best opportunity for the WHL and take the right steps."
It almost came with the new rink.
"We were at the final documentation phase to move Tri City [Americans of the WHL] here in 2004. But for a number of reasons that deal came apart," said Dakers.
Ironically, elements of that package have come full circle seven years later.
The WHL managed to salvage the Americans franchise and keep it in Tri City, Washington, while granting its disgruntled former ownership a new franchise in Chilliwack.
And now the Bruins are the Royals.
Hockey can be a funny world. "In one sense, we got the same team we almost had in 2004," noted Dakers. "Hockey is a small community."
It is also a world of distinctive pools of interest. While it can be argued that Americans "get" minor-pro leagues such as the ECHL - where many WHL grads end up after junior, by the way - Canadians don't as readily.
The great Canadian comfort zone in hockey below the NHL is junior, and the three major-junior leagues in particular, of which the WHL is one. Even the other form of junior - the Junior A product such as the B.C. Hockey League - is considered a bit foreign to Canadian tastes because the best of those players are being groomed for the U.S. collegiate NCAA.
So now back in our comfort zone, the WHL should be an easy sell in Victoria, right?
"It's safe to say it is an easier sell," said Dakers, picking his words carefully.
"People understand the product."
Season-ticket sales for the Royals are approaching the 3,000 plateau, while the Salmon Kings in their best days pushed around 2,400 before dipping dramatically in the waning seasons.
In those dwindling days of the Salmon Kings, fans couldn't help but notice that several rink-board spaces and arena backlit signs were left empty as the sell became tougher. Now Dakers said the back-lit signs that encircle the seating bowl are sold out and only three rink-board spaces remain. He added that "75 to 80 per cent" of luxury suites are now sold.
Another thing that will help the bottom line is that the Salmon Kings were pros who got paid and stayed in apartments the team had to pay for. The Royals are juniors and are billeted by local host families and basically only receive spending stipends. The Salmon Kings flew to away games while the Royals will take the bus.
Dakers said the annual operating budget for the Salmon Kings was $3 million and that the Royals should be "15 to 20 per cent less."
"It was the air travel that mostly made the ECHL more expensive [than operating in the WHL]," he said.
So fans might think RG Properties and Royals owner Graham Lee of Vancouver, who reportedly paid $5.5 million for the Bruins franchise, would be laughing all the way to his financial institution.
But although the WHL is easier to market on the Island than the ECHL, and brings fans here back into the familiar Canadian hockey orbit of majorjunior, Dakers said it is still a process that will take many years.
"Getting to be part of the fabric of a community is a lot of hard work and that takes more than just changing the letters of the leagues," he said.
"It's not quite as simple as saying people here 'get' the WHL a lot easier than they 'got' the ECHL. A lot of things still have to occur."
Dakers used the example of Kelowna, where RG Properties operates Prospera Place (but unlike in Victoria with the Royals, doesn't own the WHL main tenant Rockets).
"WHL franchises are all about peaks and valleys," he said.
"The franchise came to Kelowna after struggling in Tacoma and then struggled again in Kelowna during four seasons in the old rink and even for the first two years in the new building [Prospera Place]. Since then, it's been seven seasons of sold-out games. But it wasn't an overnight success. It never is."
There's a lesson in that for Victoria, Dakers warned. "People are expecting us [Royals] to overwhelm the market," he said.
"But that's not necessarily going to occur. Granted, it's a lot easier to say to people we're in the Western Hockey League as opposed to the East Coast Hockey League. But if Kelowna is an example, it's going to be one fan, one group, at a time over a certain period before we can finally sit back and say: 'Wow, this is really going amazingly.' "
It's still, however, rather startling to hear Dakers say he would be happy in the initial Royals season for an average attendance of 4,000 - a prediction which seems on the light side considering that nearly 3,000 season tickets have been sold. The Salmon Kings used to routinely announce more than that, although on many occasions there were obviously fewer people in the building than announced.
"I'm talking actual 4,000 people in the seats [for Royals games]," said Dakers, of his initial goal.
However it's received, the WHL promises a different look at the Memorial Centre than the last seven seasons of ECHL.
"They are all the same guys - the Salmon Kings ECHLers were all former major-junior players [and former NCAA players] - but when you get the players while they are still in junior [16 to 20 years old] there's a certain innocence," said Dakers.
"These are young guys trying to figure it out. The world is still their oyster."
Dakers addressed a sentiment popular among a certain circle of Victoria hockey fans that the American Hockey League, the next rung up from the ECHL on the pro ladder, was the better move for Victoria than the WHL.
"We had a number of chances to go to the AHL but none of them made business sense, not even with the Canucks," said Dakers.
"The AHL is not significantly different than the ECHL. If we had gotten the Canucks' [AHL team, which instead went to Chicago from Winnipeg over the summer], there would have been instant interest but would the fans have come out every night? These things are not always quite so obvious. The Canucks are extremely big right now, but what if they don't win as much in five years' time? When you looked at the longterm viability, it is the WHL that always made the most sense for this market."
So as John Sebastian sang in the folk-rock theme song to that 1970s sitcom about a teacher named Kotter - welcome back. Come to think of it, the Cougars were in their first WHL decade in Victoria during that era of disco balls, platform shoes and fans driving to the games at the old Memorial Arena in really big Oldsmobiles.
Then the house lights dimmed on major-junior here in the mid1990s. After 17 years of hockey trials, and more than a few tribulations for patient Island fans of the major-junior brand, the WHL is finally back on Blanshard.