Moose Jaw loses outdoor game – oh, well
The Moose Jaw Warriors lost a game – and they didn’t even get a chance to play it yet.
The Memorial Cup host Regina Pats called off the outdoor game at new Mosaic Stadium that was supposed to take place in mid-February. Lack of ticket sales caused organizers to re-think that game and the alumni attached to it, and move them both inside the Brandt Centre. Regardless of optics of a handful of people who have now paid many times the rate for an indoor game now getting to go to Brandt Centre for yet another indoor game, the decision was the right one. They’d sold about half what they needed to in order for the event to break even and it clearly didn’t have the appeal that organizers thought it would.
One should rethink any outdoor games at all when it comes to junior hockey. Not the least of which is the reason it’s already been done at the WHL level. Spokane defeated Kootenay 11-2 in early January, 2011 – in front of about 7,000 fans. The following month, the Pats took part in the Face-off in the Foothills at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium, with the attendance creaking past 20,000. There was also an NHL alumni game and an NHL regular season game to go along with the WHL regular season game.
Since then, outdoor games have lost a lot of their uniqueness and their appeal. In 2015, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League hosted a pair of outdoor regular season games on successive days, with combined attendance for those games being close to 13,300. Just a month ago, the Ontario and Quebec leagues combined on a game at Ottawa’s TD Place Stadium and attracted a crowd of less than 12,000.
Organizers of the Regina-Moose Jaw game are to be commended for their hubris. Spiking ticket sales up for a junior hockey regular season game and thinking people would willingly fork over hundreds of dollars for the privilege of watching junior hockey is nothing short of an impressively positive can-do attitude and I’d hire these people for visioning in a second. But there were a few key things they overlooked.
The outdoor game frenzy is far less about the teams involved than it is about the venue. The 100,000-plus that saw the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs play New Year’s Day a few years ago were there to be a part of the University of Michigan’s storied Big House experience. Ditto with the games at New England’s Foxboro game, Soldier Field in Chicago, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx... these are all places where the stadium and location itself is better than the game. Just opened in 2017 for regular season and playoff Saskatchewan Roughrider games, the new Mosaic Stadium doesn’t have the same history and pastiche that most successful outdoor games have had. For this reason alone, the game likely could have been held a couple of years ago at the old Mosaic Stadium – or even just a year before the stadium imploded – and tickets would have sold much more briskly. Alas, we’re now at the point of organizers retreating and putting a regular season game in a regular season Brandt Centre. But I’m personally glad the focus in that February game will be on the excellent junior teams involved and not a gimmick clearly well past its selling point, in a stadium that is currently ill-suited for the kind of spectacle required.