TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
At first glance it seems like a good idea for the Canucks to move their farm team to the vacant Pacific Coliseum, but with the NHL team struggling to fill its own seats, maybe not
The Vancouver Canucks could use a West Coast home for their American Hockey League farm team. The Pacific Coliseum could have room for a tenant, thanks to the Vancouver Giants moving out.
There was a time those two items might have been in sync. Not now, though.
As much as the Canucks will tell you they’re thrilled with their affiliation with the Utica Comets and as much they have another three seasons on a deal that bases their prospects some 4,600 kilometres away in the middle of New York State, you can easily fathom them moving their up-and-comers to this time zone in the future.
The Arizona Coyotes are trying to get their farmhands closer to home; they purchased their AHL Springfield (Mass.) Falcons affiliate in April, with the idea of shifting them to Tucson.
The Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks all moved their AHL teams from more eastern locales to California for the 2015-16 campaign.
There’s logic to Vancouver putting their top farm club in California one day, too.
Calgary’s Stockton Heat squad’s home base is a 90-minute drive from the Sharks’ San Jose Barracuda team, and just over a three-hour drive from the Oilers’ Bakersfield Condors. The Kings’ Ontario Reign and the Ducks’ San Diego Gulls are six- and sevenplus hours down the highway, but it’s doable by bus.
That has to be beneficial for the bottom line.
The Utica Comets have something similar, considering they’re a two-hour drive from a road game against the Rochester Americans and an hour jaunt from the Syracuse Crunch. Getting personnel to and from Vancouver is the bugaboo.
There are dozens of direct flights from Los Angeles to Vancouver every day. Your goalie gets hurt in the morning skate at Rogers Arena? It’s feasible to have a backup here from the AHL by game time. Jim Benning wakes up and decides he wants to get an immediate firsthand look at Jordan Subban? The general manager could be having lunch with Subban that day, watching the rearguard prospect play that evening and be back at Rogers Arena attending to other Canucks affairs the next morning.
There’s a reason other NHL clubs are doing this. There’s not the rigmarole that comes with having your affiliate in the east. You don’t have your prospects visiting various airports because of connecting flights on the way to Vancouver after a promotion.
An emergency call-up isn’t nearly as big an emergency.
The Giants announced last week they were moving from the Coliseum after 15 WHL seasons there and would be ready to start the 2016-17 campaign at Langley Events Centre. If they had done that five years ago, putting a Canucks farm team in its place would have made sense, although we should also point out PNE spokeswoman Laura Ballance has maintained the Coliseum doesn’t need a primary tenant to thrive.
Five years ago, Canucks tickets were scarce. People who couldn’t get in to see the big team play would have coveted the chance to see the farmhands.
There would have been an appetite to have a large crowd at the Coliseum on the same night there was a packed house at Rogers Arena. And it’s easy to guess sponsors would have been willing to pony up extra cash to be a part of both.
See the new Canucks play where the old Canucks used to? Having the Canucks farmhands at the Coliseum five years ago would have marketed itself on that aspect alone.
And you had all the infrastructure already in place.
Now it’s different. You didn’t have to look too hard to find Canucks tickets most nights last season and you could probably track some down for less than face value. Put a Canucks farm team close to home and you’d be competing against yourself on some level.
The Canucks have some work to do to win back fans right now. They don’t need to up the degree of difficultly by putting their farm club down the street — despite how attractive that may seem.