Hockey fans were never more than lukewarm about the Abbotsford Heat, the American Hockey League team that’s moving east – probably to upstate New York – during the off-season.
Live hockey is, as Stompin’ Tom sang, the best game you can name. But Fraser Valley fans proved they would rather stay at home and watch the Vancouver Canucks of today on HDTV for next to nothing than pay reasonable prices to see the future Calgary Flames in person at the $64 million rink built by Abbotsford taxpayers.
The Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre, which opened in 2009, was supposed to be home of the Heat until at least 2020. The franchise wasn’t supposed to leave early in 2014 for $5.5 million after saddling taxpayers with a $7.2 million bill for losses at the gate. The 7,000-capacity rink never got a naming rights sponsor and will now be known simply as Abbotsford Centre. The April 15 announcement was made just six weeks after the team’s name and logo were finally registered in Industry Canada’s trademarks database.
American sports economists like Brad Humphreys and Dennis Coates warned in their 2004 “Caught Stealing” study that the benefits of stadiums and arenas were vastly oversold by subsidized boosters. “Professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy,” they wrote.
Ironically, it was 39 years ago that another Vancouver hockey team with a hot moniker moved to Calgary. The World Hockey Association’s Blazers played at the Pacific Coliseum, under the ownership of Jim Pattison, in 1973-’74 and 1974-’75. They donned a white-hat-and-smiley face logo as the Cowboys, but lasted only two more seasons in Cowtown before folding.
Overruns at General Motors Place (now Rogers Arena) and the exorbitant $125 million NBA franchise fee were too much for Arthur Griffiths to bear alone, so he enlisted help from family friend John McCaw. The Seattle telecom billionaire eventually took over the Vancouver Canucks, the Vancouver Grizzlies and the $160 million “Garage”.
His first attempt to sell “basketball’s Bad News Bears” to Bill Laurie and his WalMart heiress wife, Nancy, fell through when the NBA soured on the planned move to St. Louis.
New owner Michael Heisley famously sang O Canada to start the Grizzlies’ 2000-’01 season, but the Chicagoan “FedExed” the franchise to Memphis in the end. The team was dismal on the hard court and was hamstrung by the low-flying loonie and Vancouver’s relative lack of corporate headquarters; group ticket buys, advertising and suite rentals lagged after the hoop honeymoon wore off. Since moving to Tennessee, the franchise has advanced to the playoffs six times and boasts minority owners like Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning.
Sometimes moves make sense in the end.
Nelson Skalbania sold the New Westminster Bruins to Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, who moved the team to Kamloops in 1981. Now known as the Blazers, they’re a Western Hockey League cornerstone owned by Northland Properties CEO Tom Gaglardi, who also owns the NHL’s Dallas Stars.
The Royal City got a replacement Bruins in 1983, but owner Ron Dixon moved them five years later to a $12 million arena he built in Kennewick, Washington. Peter and Ron Toigo of White Spot fame bought the Tri-City Americans in 1991 for $3 million. The younger Toigo sold the Americans when he was awarded an expansion franchise for the Vancouver Giants to play at the Pacific Coliseum beginning in 2001.
Baseball’s Vancouver Canadians won the Pacific Coast League championship in their final game at Nat Bailey Stadium in 1999. The 1951-built ballpark was deemed too old and too small for triple A, so a Sacramento, California, group headed by Art Savage persuaded the club’s Japanese owners to sell. The C’s reappeared in 2000 as the River Cats at the new, $46.5 million Raley Field.
Fred Herrmann had pondered moving his Southern Oregon Timberjacks of the single-A Northwest League to Vancouver, Washington, but when the Nat had a vacancy he moved to the other Vancouver, without missing a beat. Fast-forward to 2014 and the three-time, defending NWL champion C’s are producing future Toronto Blue Jays and packing the renovated ballpark for owners Jake Kerr, Jeff Mooney and Andy Dunn. Last November, they were named Minor League Baseball’s best franchise, after 184,042 turnstile clicks with 23 sellouts in 38 home games. •
