Kelowna Rockets to bid on 2020 Memorial Cup
Team to make pitch to host tournament to WHL governors in early October
The last time the Kelowna Rockets bid on the Memorial Cup, their real rivals turned out to be the taxpayers of Saskatchewan. It was no contest. Saskatoon got the national junior hockey tournament in 2013 largely because the government of that province guaranteed the event would yield $3.5 million for the Canadian Hockey League.
The Kelowna Rockets, on their own and without any government backers, had guaranteed the league $1.7 million.
“Saskatoon was the last to bid, and they walked up, and $3 million, and bang, it was gone,” Rockets owner Bruce Hamilton recalled Thursday. The experience was bitter, but it did not sour the team against deciding to bid again for the Memorial Cup.
Hamilton announced Thursday the team would like to stage the 2020 tournament, which features Canada’s three best major junior hockey teams plus the club from the host city.
During a press conference at Prospera Place, Hamilton stressed the team doesn’t expect or want any similar financial guarantees from city and provincial officials.
“We’re not asking for any backing from anybody,” he said. “We take the risk. We’re not asking anybody else to.
“We’ll have lots of people step forward and want to do things for us — I really believe that — but we have to run the event and we know we’ll do a good job,” Hamilton said.
The bid for the 2020 Memorial Cup, to run May 22-31, will be presented to the Western Hockey League’s 22-member board of governors in early October, with a decision on the host city expected during the same meetings.
Kelowna hosted the 2004 Memorial Cup, and the Rockets became one of only a handful of host cities to win the tournament since it was first staged in 1919.
“We are 102 per cent confident that Kelowna is going to do an absolutely outstanding job in winning this bid,” said Tom Dyas, a businessman and past chamber of commerce president who will head the bid committee.
Dyas said he well remembers watching the Rockets win the 2004 Memorial Cup in the company of his father, now 97 years old, and alongside more than 6,000 other cheering fans.
“The electricity that happened in that rink was enough to light up the whole Okanagan,” Dyas said.
Mayor Colin Basran said he didn’t have tickets to that championship game but watched in the company of many others in large tents set up outside Prospera Place.
“I think the party in the parking lot was almost as good as it was in the building,” Basran said.
In 2004, Kelowna was credited with re-imagining the hosting of the Memorial Cup, engaging even non-hockey fans with a variety of community events.
“We started something here. It wasn’t just a hockey tournament,” Hamilton said. “It became a festival, and that’s how you get more people involved.”
In the intervening years, the growth in Kelowna’s hospitality and tourism sectors has only made it even more well-positioned to host an event such as the Memorial Cup, Hamilton said.
And he expects some intriguing and unique ideas to come from Kelowna’s expanded business community on how to spread excitement about the Memorial Cup beyond the hockey community.
“There’s more arms for us to reach out and grab to help us make it even bigger and better, with new ideas. We can’t stand by and do the same thing. We need to be innovative,” Hamilton said.
While this past season was a success, the Rockets had a disappointing playoff run this spring, getting swept in the first round by the TriCity Americans.
Hamilton said he wasn’t at all concerned about the team being competitive enough in two years’ time to put in a good showing at the Memorial Cup if Kelowna is chosen as host city. A criteria in the selection process, he said, is an independent evaluation of a team’s competitiveness to avoid “embarrassments” during the tournament.
And he said announcement of the team’s intention to bid for the 2020 tournament wasn’t designed to boost renewals at a time when season ticket holders are typically deciding whether to pay for passes to the upcoming hockey campaign.
“No, not at all,” he said. “We want to get out front and running so we’re not in a rush at the end to do it all.”
The only possible modification to 6,200-seat Prospera Place likely needed to stage the tournament would be an upgrade to the rink’s 20-year-old dressing rooms.
As for how much the team is likely to offer the Canadian Hockey League to stage the 2020 Memorial Cup, Hamilton said that number hadn’t been set yet.
But, he noted Halifax had won the 2019 tournament with a pledge to provide the CHL with $1.3 million, a figure he said was much more realistic than the $3.5-million bid offered by Saskatoon for the 2013 event.
“I think the CHL has seen it’s not a money thing anymore. It’s hosting an event in a city that should be able to host it size-wise and facility-wise,” Hamilton said.
Since the 2013 Saskatoon tournament did not generate the expected revenues from ticket sales and private sponsorships, the Saskatchewan government did have to provide a payment to the CHL of almost $700,000.