The groundbreaking celebration was set for February 18th in the California desert. Free tickets had been distributed and presumably ceremonial shovels were acquired for various photo ops as the excitement for a new hockey arena in Palm Springs was building.
Five days prior to the event, it was cancelled.
The arena in question is a joint operation between Oak View Group and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, costing $250 million to result in a 10,000 seat facility to house NHL Seattle’s American Hockey League affiliate. Construction was set to start in February and the arena was to be finished in time for the beginning of the 2021-2022 AHL Season.
The reason given for the delay of the breaking ground event was “extenuating circumstances” and an apology for any inconvenience was offered by tribal officials. The delay hardly seemed like anything to worry about at the time. Arena deals are complicated and surely there were details to iron out between the tribe and Oak View Group.
Now, five months later, the arena is in limbo and the clock is ticking.
“Once we get past (the virus) we’ll make a decision if we’re gonna proceed,” Leiweke he told the Sun without any specifics on when they would reevaluate.
The ‘if’ in Leiweke’s statement lands heavy.
This was the first time that anyone hinted at the prospect of the arena not moving forward. As detailed in the Sun article, there have been issues surrounding a parking plan and other safety concerns to be settled. Nobody has gone on record to say that these issues are deal-breakers, however.
Could the arena deal in Palm Springs end up being delayed? What kind of repercussions would that have on NHL Seattle’s plan for an AHL affiliate?
When asked for clarification, OVG’s Senior Vice President of Entertainment overseeing the Palm Springs Arena, John Bolton, couldn’t offer much more detail.
“Given the current unprecedented times, discussions around arena construction timelines continue and we will provide updates when available as we work closely with the City of Palm Springs and Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians,” Bolton said.
That statement feels more positive as the groups are still talking about timelines, giving the appearance that the deal is ultimately going to happen. The question of when, remains.
The AHL approved NHL Seattle’s bid for expansion to Palm Springs in September of 2019 and the new team was set to join the league for the 2021-2022 season, the same season that the NHL club would begin play.
Assuming that OVG and the Agua Caliente tribe can work out the kinks of the arena deal and begin construction, the timeline to begin play in the desert by next season appears to be in jeopardy. How fast can they build a 300,000 square foot facility?
If Palm Springs is delayed, or if the arena deal falls apart completely, where will, or can, NHL Seattle turn to for its AHL players in 2021?
Playing without a taxi squad is out of the question as NHL Seattle will need minor league players. Even in year one, there will be injuries, there will be call ups and getting players into the system and developing is key to long term successes.
NHL Seattle will need to have a plan if Palm Springs is delayed.
It’s unlikely that the team would find a temporary city to house an AHL squad as the logistics involved would be extensive and not worth the effort for one year.
Having an AHL team play out of Climate Pledge Arena is one option. The San Jose Sharks share the SAP Center and a practice facility with their affiliate, the Barracuda, so it wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Sharks are building a new, smaller building for the Barracuda, however.
Sharing an arena would present some travel issues as the AHL relies mostly on bus travel and Seattle would be isolated from the rest of the AHL’s Pacific Division which sees five of its seven clubs in California. Could those travel concerns be palatable for one season? Maybe.
The most likely recourse would be to split the affiliation with an existing AHL team.
For their inaugural season, the Vegas Golden Knights shared the Chicago Wolves with the St. Louis Blues. Vegas had 13 players who spent the majority of the 2017-2018 season in Chicago. Three of those players they had acquired through the NHL expansion draft, two were picked up via a trade, while eight were signed as free agents.
The Blues moved their affiliate the next season and the Knights have since purchased the San Antonio Rampage and relocated them to Henderson, Nevada, re-branding them as the Henderson Silver Knights.
Which team to join would also be a question. Currently, just 12 of the AHL’s 31 clubs are independently owned, with the rest owned by the NHL parent club. Seattle would have to work with one of the independents to split the roster.
If Seattle were to split a team for a year it would mean they would have fewer players in the AHL pipeline. Rather than a full roster of players, it would be half. Depending on what team they split with and who the other prospects are, playing time could be affected and as such, player development. It’s not a great long-term option but could bridge the year if needed.
The optimist says that the arena deal can get finalized and under construction shortly with enough time to be opened for the next AHL season. One thing working in Seattle’s favor is the uncertainty of when hockey seasons will start up again. If the AHL pushes back the start of this coming season, and therefore next season, Palm Springs could end up with more time to get the arena built.
But, in the meantime, NHL Seattle will need a contingency plan in case there is no arena for an AHL team to play in, come 2021.
On this week’s Sound of Hockey, the guys give their reactions to the news that NHL Seattle’s future home will be called Climate Pledge Arena, which gets their wheels turning about which NHL/NBA arenas have the worst corporate names.
Also on this episode, John, Andy, and Darren recap the chaotic NHL Draft Lottery that happened this past week.
That dastardly Jeff Bezos has done it again! The eccentric gazillionaire CEO of Amazon let the cat out of the bag Thursday that his company had bought the naming rights to the former Key Arena, and would be re-naming the future home of the NHL Seattle franchise Climate Pledge Arena.
True story, my wife read the news to me while we were in the car, and my real-time reaction was that she was reading fake news and had been duped. “That’s the stupidest name ever!” I probably exclaimed. But then she shared the whole context of the name—that the building would have zero waste at events, electric Zambonis, ice made from recycled rain water, and a whole host of other green initiatives—and my mind was immediately changed.
Rendering of a concourse at the future Climate Pledge Arena.
I loved it. I still love it. Climate. Pledge. Arena. As in, “I’m an arena that pledges to be the most climate friendly of all the arenas, and if you aren’t climate friendly, then please at least keep your single-use plastics the f*** out of here.”
Sure, NHL Seattle, Oak View Group, and Amazon could have come up with something that slides off the tongue with a little more zest, but frankly, they also could have called it Jeff Bezos Prime Rink at Amazon Arena, Powered by AWS. And you know something? With the likes of AWS CEO, Andy Jassy, among the minority owners of the team, and the headquarters of one of the world’s largest companies next door, a terrible corporate name like that would have been completely feasible and downright warranted.
But they didn’t do that. Instead, Amazon still invested the (likely) hundreds of millions of dollars to earn the rights, but rather than sticking its own name on the façade, decided to make the glowing signs atop the historic preserved roof serve as a daily reminder to Seattleites and visitors from around the globe (well, if the pandemic ever ends) that our city, which gets its lifeblood from the natural beauty that envelops it, is a leader in the fight against climate change.
It’s a beautifully progressive approach to something that has been the same for decades. Yet, many of the folks on Twitter have poopooed this progressive thinking.
Case in point:
I'm all for fighting climate change, but this is the dumbest f**king name ever. I'd be happier with 'Sticky Dick Arena'. https://t.co/65gPwYEi3c
And for those saying that Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, and he could just spend the money to fight climate change, well… yes… he certainly could. But why would he give the pocket change that it cost him to buy the naming rights to this arena, when he can instead pledge $10 billion? Yes, Amazon has certainly contributed to the climate crisis, but so have you, and with all due respect, how much money have you pledged?
Anyway, since everyone seems to be so upset that an organization would do something so ridiculous as focus the naming rights of an arena on something as silly as climate change, perhaps you would have preferred that they call it something a little more straight forward and corporate, like one of the following perfectly named and less controversial venues from across the United States:
Smoothie King Arena
KFC Yum! Arena
PPG Paints Arena
American Airlines Arena
American Airlines Center
Chase Center
Chase Field
Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Mercedes-Benz Superdome
Target Center
Target Field
T-Mobile Field
CenturyLink Field
Lincoln Financial Field
Minute Maid Park (formerly “Enron Field”… ENRON! LOL!)
Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
Guaranteed Rate Field
Citizens Bank Park
TIAA Bank Field
M&T Bank Stadium
US Bank Stadium
Little Caesars Arena
Hard Rock Stadium
Chesapeake Energy Center
FirstEnergy Stadium
Xcel Energy Center
Or, my personal favorite:
Talking Stick Resort Arena
You’re right, something like those more traditional venue names would have been way better than naming the arena after something that draws attention to the environment. Oh, and by the way, of the seven Canadian NHL arenas, two have the word “Rogers” in the name (not to be confused with Rogers Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays), two have “Bell,” two have “Scotiabank,” and the last one is called Canadian Tire Centre, but was previously called… yep, you guessed it… Scotiabank Place.
They could have just called it Amazon Arena, but you wouldn’t have liked that either. Climate Pledge Arena. Climate. Pledge. Arena. That’s our arena. That’s our Greenhouse. That’s our Bio-Dome. I love it.
Watch the below video from NHL Seattle’s press release to learn more about Climate Pledge Arena and its green initiatives.
Lots of news to discuss on this week’s Sound of Hockey, both locally and nationally.
First, Andy gives an update on what’s happening with the WHL. Then John gives an update on what’s happening with the NHL Seattle franchise, as the name release and AHL arena have apparently been delayed. John, Andy, and Darren also give an update as to what is happening for the NHL as a whole, which is still proceeding with its return to play plan. Oh, and Buffalo fired its whole staff.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
Lots of news to discuss on this week’s Sound of Hockey, both locally and nationally.
First, Andy gives an update on what’s happening with the WHL. Then John gives an update on what’s happening with the NHL Seattle franchise, as the name release and AHL arena have apparently been delayed. John, Andy, and Darren also give an update as to what is happening for the NHL as a whole, which is still proceeding with its return to play plan. Oh, and Buffalo fired its whole staff.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
On this week’s Sound of Hockey, Darren is quite frustrated by his experience buying his first car through a car dealership, and he gives his two cents via a show-opening “Get Off My Lawn” segment.
John, Andy, and Darren also break down a recent NHLtoSeattle.com story about potential goalies that NHL Seattle may select in the 2021 Expansion Draft.
It’s a short but sweet episode, that’s worth a listen!
Other segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
On this week’s Sound of Hockey, Darren is quite frustrated by his experience buying his first car through a car dealership, and he gives his two cents via a show-opening “Get Off My Lawn” segment.
John, Andy, and Darren also break down a recent NHLtoSeattle.com story about potential goalies that NHL Seattle may select in the 2021 Expansion Draft.
Other segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
It’s a short but sweet episode that’s worth a listen.
While it’s been over twenty years since it happened, Jamie Butt remembers the first goal the Tacoma Sabercats scored at their home rink in the Tacoma Dome.
He’s the one that scored it.
“It was kind of a greasy goal,” Butt recalls of the goal. “I just went hard to the net. I was getting dumped and just kind of threw it on net and it went in.”
The goal delighted the nearly 7,000 fans who came to the Tacoma Dome on an early November night in 1997 to witness something they had not seen before: professional hockey. Tacoma was previously home to major junior hockey and Seattle has a pro hockey history but it’s the Sabercats who are the region’s last pro team.
Butt’s goal sparked Tacoma to a 5-3 win over the Idaho Steelheads and the victory would be the first of 11 straight wins that the expansion team ripped off in its first West Coast Hockey League season.
“We had a really good team,” Butt says. “It was a good season for us.”
Lasting only five seasons it would be easy to write off the Sabercats as a failure but on the ice, the team was a success.
In the their first three seasons the Sabercats went 137-49-20 and reached the league finals every year, culminating in a Taylor Cup championship by beating the San Diego Gulls in season two. They scored a lot of goals as well, averaging over four-and-a-half per game that first year.
It’s hard to find a better start to a pro franchise in any sport but the league they played in had issues and was not set up for long term success.
The West Coast Hockey League began play in 1995 during a time where the minor league pro hockey landscape was much different than it is today. The International Hockey League and American Hockey League were the top level with teams in each league having NHL affiliations. Below those leagues the East Coast Hockey League and the Central Hockey League covered the East and Midwest.
The Tacoma Sabercats joined the WCHL in 1997 (James Miller photo)
A British Columbia businessman named Bruce Taylor saw a void out west and worked to berth the WCHL in 1995 with teams ranging from as far north as Alaska down to Arizona in the south. Taylor owned several franchises early on and the league’s championship trophy would be named after him.
He saw an opportunity in Tacoma and divested his interest in the Fresno Falcons, Reno Renegades, and the Bakersfield Fog to concentrate fully on the Sabercats for the 1997-1998 season.
“I loved Bruce,” Frank Colarusso, who served as the Sabercats Vice President of Marketing and Sales, says. “Bruce was good to me and my family. There was a mutual respect there and I liked working for him. Owners can drive you crazy but at the end of the day he was a good man.”
With no NHL affiliation, finding players to make up the roster was somewhat of a free for all. There was no draft so head coach and general manager John Oliver had to scour the free agent pool to find guys to contribute. They weren’t going to sign high end NHL prospects, but Oliver was able to put together competitive teams.
“These were guys who just wanted to play pro hockey as long as they could,” Sabercats radio play-by-play man Thom Buening says. “Some of the older guys came back from playing overseas in Europe…a lot of them came out of NCAA, Major Junior, Junior A, and some of our import guys were playing minor pro in Europe as well.”
Players from Europe came over as did several guys who had played junior in the area. Butt had played his junior hockey with the Tacoma Rockets and former Seattle Thunderbirds Danny Lorenz and Brett Duncan were among the names who came back to the Northwest to play hockey.
Tacoma’s best player may have been Dampy Brar, who played all five seasons with the Sabercats and is their all-time leading scorer with 330 points in 297 games. He represented Tacoma in all star games and was voted the most popular player by Tacoma’s fans. Brar topped the 20-goal mark in every season with Tacoma, twice eclipsing 30 goals.
His journey to Tacoma started in Alberta where he was playing with Concordia University College of Alberta. Current Seattle Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge was a teammate with Brar and thought that he had too much skill to be playing at that low a level.
“He said ‘what the hell are you doing here,” Brar says with a laugh.
La Forge would put Brar in touch with his father, who was an agent at the time. That led to Brar to getting looks in the Central Hockey League before landing in Tacoma in time for the Sabercats first season. Brar would play every year the club existed.
Dampy Brar is the Tacoma Sabercats all tine leading scorer (James Miller photo)
“You always heard of Seattle but Tacoma, I didn’t know how south it was,” he recalls. “Back then there was no online presence. We had to get out a map to find where it was.”
Brar was one of the first players of East Indian decent to play professional hockey and with his playing days behind him now, he is giving back to that community by co-running the APNA Hockey school in Canada to further develop players of diverse backgrounds.
The WCHL was very much a minor league and the Sabercats story certainly has a Bull Durham or Slapshot feel to it.
The league set up in cities that are not, and were not, traditional hockey hotbeds and featured some creative team names. There was the Gila Monsters in Tucson and the Ice Dogs in Long Beach that allowed for fun logos and mascots.
Perhaps the quirkiest name was the Bakersfield Fog.
“Their mascot looked like a moldy raisin.” Buening says of Bakersfield. “It was supposed to be fog. I think the last year I was there they changed (the name) to the Condors.”
Makeshift hockey arenas also littered the league. The Tacoma Dome was one of those but the league also saw a theater converted into an ice arena along with a handful of buildings who’s better days were behind them.
Buening, who currently calls the Seattle Thunderbirds games on the radio, had to make do with what he was given night in and night out. That included broadcasting from the stands and in one case, an office.
“Reno, they played in a convention center,” he says. “That’s where their ice was, like where you’d see a trade show. I broadcast from an office up on the wall. I slid the window open to broadcast. I had to duck my head out of this window in the corner to broadcast from this office. The phone’s ringing and I’m trying to call a game.”
While most of the travel for Tacoma was by plane, a nice upgrade for players who toiled on buses in junior hockey, there were still time for hi jinks.
After boarding one flight, Duncan and teammate Scott Drevitch broke out the cards while the rest of the passengers were boarding. As things often do between teammates, a friendly disagreement broke out that resulted in one of them giving the other a healthy punch.
A flight attendant witnessed the punch and thought the two players were going to be trouble. Despite assurances that it was all in good fun, they got kicked off the flight. Oliver, sensing a chance to bond his team together urged the rest of the players to get off the plane in solidarity with the ousted pair and followed them back to the terminal.
“He got up but nobody else got off, they walked off,” Beuning recalls. “We stayed there and flew without them. He said ‘lets go’ and everyone whispered ‘don’t get up’.”
The two players and coach had to hop on a different flight and met up with the team at their final destination.
“I was in the back with my Walkman headphones on,” Brar says of the incident. “I was a younger guy and thought ‘if they all get up, I’ll get up’.”
Despite the early success on the ice, the Sabercats struggled to draw fans.
They were virtually ignored by Seattle media and had a hard time marketing the sport to an area that at the time, was not chock full of hockey fans. The WHL’s Rockets moved out of Tacoma in 1995 but those fans weren’t enough to sustain a minor league franchise.
Over the five years the team existed they averaged under 5,000 fans per game. Their best season, attendance wise, was in 1998-1999 when the team averaged 4,878 per game during the season they would go on to win the league title.
“There was a fairly decent base of hockey fans that were left over from the Rockets,” Colarusso says. “Without disparaging the Tacoma Dome, they did everything they could to help us, but the building just wasn’t suited to being a great hockey facility. It was too big, and the sight lines weren’t good. We didn’t have a great building to play in over time.”
The Tacoma Sabercats had to deal with a home building not conducive to hockey. (James Miller photo)
The Dome didn’t help the Sabercats cause.
Like the Rockets before them, it became clear that the multi-purpose dome built in 1980 was not conducive for hockey. The stands pulled away from the rink, leaving fans far away from the ice, making it hard to follow the action closely.
The building was big as well. Too big for junior or minor league hockey and a crowd of 5,000 fans, which would be a nice number for comparable minor leagues, left the building without any kind of intimate atmosphere.
“You walked in and it was a rink inside of a big dome.” Brar says. “The lighting wasn’t good and it wasn’t great for the fans who could of been a little bit closer…Tacoma had those challenges but as a player, the first three years, the way they ran their events, I can’t say it was a negative thing. I enjoyed playing there.”
There would be ticket promotions and at times the team would draw big crowds for a single game, only to see attendance drop off the next night. With 18,000 seats in the building there was no real incentive to buy season tickets as you could easily walk up and buy one hours before the game.
“We probably had a two to three thousand base who were die hard hockey fans, but we needed probably six to seven,” Colarusso says.
Prior to the 2000-2001 season, Oliver had moved on and was replaced behind the bench by Robert Dirk and the club struggled to two losing seasons in a row. Attendance dropped off significantly, dipping as low as 2,854 per game for the 2001-2002 final season.
Around the league, franchises were folding as the league dealt with financial instability. Taylor sold the club and when the new owners could not agree on a Tacoma Dome lease, the decision was made to fold the Sabercats.
“The end of Tacoma was sad,” Brar says. “I was voted most popular player, it was great to be recognized by the fans. It was appreciative to play for those fans, it was touching.”
Brar would play one more season in the league, finishing his career in Boise with the Steelheads.
Several of the WCHL teams merged into the ECHL and some are still operating. The Idaho Steelheads are the ECHL affiliate of the Dallas Stars and after changing from the Fog to the Condors, Bakersfield jumped into the AHL and are now the affiliate for the Edmonton Oilers. After folding from the ECHL in 2006, the Gulls were hatched again in 2015 when the Anaheim Ducks moved their AHL franchise to San Diego, giving new life to one of the top WCHL franchises.
The Sabercats were short lived but provided entertainment and good hockey for fans in the south end. They won early, won a title, and for the next year, until NHL Seattle begins play, will be known as the last pro hockey in the Puget Sound area.
The base of fans that Colarusso mentioned are still around and from time to time at a game in Kent’s ShoWare Center, you will spot a Sabercats sweater in the crowd.
For the first time since USA Hockey started publishing their numbers, player membership is down more than 1%, a decline of over 6000 player memberships compared to the 2018-19 season.
Part of this is certainly due to COVID-19 hitting at the end of the season and shutting down recreational and competitive hockey across the US. This could also be part of the broader story of the decline of youth sports participation across the US and finally reaching hockey.
There were some bright spots. Missouri (+2,087), Florida (+1,061), and Washington State (+876) added the most player memberships since last season. Nevada also added 661 players which is up an incredible 26% season over season. On the opposite side, New York (-3,159), Michigan (-1,807), and Pennsylvania (-1,594) saw the biggest reduction in player memberships.
Growth of Female Hockey Continues
Another bright spot is female hockey continues to grow, adding ~1,300 player memberships compared to last year. The 1,300-player increase was not quite the same pace as the previous three years of the addition of 3,000 players per season, but it was still good for a 1.6% increase. Any increase in sports should be considered significant these days.
Washington State
As noted above, Washington State added 876 player memberships, which is up 8.7% compared to 2018-19 and is the second biggest increase this state has seen since the numbers have been reported.
Much of this growth came from 20+ age group. As more ice comes online in Snoqualmie and Northgate, not to mention of the arrival of the NHL team, we should expect the youth numbers to increase significantly.
If you would like to drill into any state dashboard, you can do so here:
Things are a little lighter on this week’s episode of Sound of Hockey. This week, the guys welcome John Goodwin, one of NHL Seattle’s first Pro Scouts. It’s a great conversation, as John (Goodwin, not Barr) exudes passion for the game. You will definitely appreciate hearing from him.
Also this week, John (Barr, not Goodwin) gives an update on what we can expect when the NHL returns to play, and Andy makes a strong play for stuffed animals in the stands.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
Much of this growth came from 20+ age group. As more ice comes online in Snoqualmie and Northgate, not to mention of the arrival of the NHL team, we should expect the youth numbers to increase significantly.
