Canucks love atmosphere in Utica
Farm team located on other side of continent, but fans pack the stands to watch Comets
FUTICA, N.Y. ive years ago the Vancouver Canucks’ plan seemed simple enough.
Buy an AHL franchise. Stick it in a suitable market. Build it to their specs. Watch it flourish.
How tough could it be?
Uh, did we mention these are the Canucks?
Three months after purchasing the Peoria Rivermen, the Canucks were still conducting a frantic search for the new home of their top minor league affiliate. Negotiations broke down with the city of Abbotsford. They rejected Peoria. Seattle was considered but the NHL had other plans for that market. Portland, Ore. was a no-go.
With the clock ticking rather loudly, Utica, N.Y., suddenly popped up on the Canucks’ radar after that city’s negotiations broke down with the Calgary Flames. Then-Canucks assistant general manager Laurence Gilman and then-Canucks executive Victor de Bonis made the journey to central New York where they encountered Robert Esche, the former NHL goalie, who was knee deep in a renovation at Utica’s beloved Memorial Auditorium.
“It was a mess,” says Gilman. “Rubble everywhere.”
But it would get better. For all concerned.
Five years later, the NHL team and this town in the Mohawk River Valley have forged a powerful relationship. The Aud — it’s official name is, ahem, the Adirondack Bank Centre at the Utica Memorial Auditorium, the Aud to locals — has sold out all 131 games since the franchise’s rebirth in 2013-14 and will sell out again for Wednesday’s Game 3 of the Comets-Toronto Marlies AHL playoff series. This has created an all-hockey, all-the-time environment and a level of accountability the Canucks love. It’s also a huge economic generator for this city of just over 60,000.
The AHL has seemingly outgrown these small rust-belt towns but something of that history lives on with the Comets. Yes, the Canucks’ agreement with the Comets expires at the end of next season but there’s no reason to think this relationship
won’t continue.
Just ask Trevor Linden.
“You think about the atmosphere you want your young players walking into,” says the Canucks president. “The results matter. The building is sold out every night. It’s a hockey atmosphere with snow on the ground. For me it’s a special place. I love what it represents.” So do the players.
“It’s kind of an old-school hockey city,” says team captain Carter Bancks, a B.C. boy from Marysville.
“When they got the team back five years ago they were really excited. They want to hold on to it. We feel that every single day.”
This is Bancks’ fourth season with the Comets and he’s part of a leadership group the organization has carefully constructed to help mentor its young players. This playoff season Jonathan Dahlen, Lukas Jasek and Kole Lind have all arrived in Utica where they figure to play next season under the tutelage of head coach Trent Cull and GM Ryan
Johnson. They’ll be joined by another layer of high-end Canucks prospects and yet another level of young pros who could move up and down between Vancouver and Utica.
Collectively, that group represents the Canucks’ future and the development of those players is crucial to whatever hopes the team has of reversing its fortunes. Johnson and Cull will play huge roles there.
But so will this city and everything that comes with it.
The Aud is a jewel of a facility that offers every conceivable modern convenience and a few that are inconceivable for a town and venue (capacity: 3,924) this size. There are, for example, five bars on site and a fancy new restaurant being constructed. There are also seven suites, all with a sleek, polished look.
The Aud opened in 1960 and its futuristic cable-suspension ceiling was the inspiration for Madison Square Gardens.
Here’s another reason to love the rink. Scenes from Slap Shot were filmed here.
Esche, who knew Gilman from their days with the Phoenix Coyotes, was the driving force behind the original renovation in 2013 and a subsequent expansion last summer. A native of Utica, he’s tapped into some generous state funding — $10 million for the first go-round, $10 million more for the second — and he’s created “the heartbeat of the city,” according to Johnson.
“Robert has pushed the envelope,” says Johnson. “This was a last-minute throw together (in 2013) and it was like it had been up and running for 10 years.”
Utica had an AHL franchise from 1987 to 1993 before the New Jersey Devils moved their affiliate to Albany. A series of teams then operated in second-tier minor leagues — the Bulldogs in the Colonial Hockey League, the Mohawk Valley Prowlers in the United Hockey League, the Mohawk Valley IceCats in the North Eastern Hockey League — before the Canucks came calling.
“It’s like Winnipeg,” says Linden. “They lost their team and felt they got cheated. And then they came back. It means a lot to them and their city.”
There are challenges. Utica is three times zones and 4,700 km away from Vancouver, by far the greatest distance between an NHL team and their affiliate. This makes transporting players an eight-hour, one-carride, three-airport ordeal.
Johnson counters the proximity to other AHL cities — the Comets play in a division with Toronto, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Belleville and Laval — means more practice days for the players and less travelling time. The Comets’ GM said his team had 69 full practice days this season, which doesn’t count gameday skates. The Canucks had 39.
“Say we put this in Abbotsford,” says Linden. “We’re going to lose half those practice days, flying in, flying out of YVR. I don’t know. I like this.”
As it happens, the agreement between the Canucks and Comets has an option that kicks in Jan. 1, 2019. Seems like the love affair between this team and their town won’t be ending soon.