JMCx4
Censorship is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
Whatever team has the money to blow on owning & operating one of these. Enough room for call-ups AND their gear ...
UPDATE : Trois-Rivières Lions are still alive with a potential new owner. Newfoundland Growlers are FOLDING!
- Thread starter Martin Veillette
- Start date
Lions franchise update: new lease being negotiated and a new owner has been revealed as Spire Sports has been or soon will be approved as Crelin will relinquish temporary control of the Lions and there will be a presser in Trois Rivieres Wednesday afternoon
OFFICIAL: T-R Lions complete transfer of ownership from DSE to Spire Sports-Hockey, which also owns Rapid City and Greenville in the same league.... Lease extended until at least 2034
BruinDust
Registered User
- Aug 2, 2005
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They had no chance of success really. And it doesn't fall on Deacon Sports.
They didn't have the support of the league itself. Owners of other teams just saw the franchise and the cost to go play games in St. John's as bad business. If the ECHL as a whole really wanted to still be in St. John's, it would be. Some of the other team owners just wanted the Growlers gone and this was alluded to by a reporter when the story broke.
Deacon certainly wasn't helped by the cost of living increases. When times are tough and disposable income is less, the first thing to go for most families is nights out to restaurants/movies/sporting events.
But the larger issue was St. John's Sports and Entertainment. I travel to St. John's for work and have been to a few Growlers games. From what I saw, and what I heard talking to folks, SJSE is/was the major problem in running that venue.
From what I've been told chatting with the locals at the games, SJSE is corrupt organization stuff to the brim with incompetents milking the taxpayer for all their worth. Deacon Sports wanted to do them a favor and take that nearly 30 year old arena off the taxpayers hands and renovate the building and SJSE told them to go kick rocks. No way those SJSE executives were about to give up their 6-figure salaries just to appease Deacon Sports. If the arena was sold to Deacon, SJSE has no purpose and would disappear taking those cushy executive patronage jobs with them. This is where the relationship started going south. Deacon crossed a line with them going public with their desire to own, operate, and renovate the arena.
Years ago, SJSE and another group competed for a QMJHL franchise and the other group was awarded it. Bitter and resentful, SJSE did everything in their power to make sure that other group had no chance of success, rather than work with their major tenant to find financial solutions. Two years in, that group gave up.
Unlike a private entity, SJSE is taxpayer funded and have basically no incentive to try and maximize the arena's revenue by trying to find user groups to rent the facility 300+ nights a year. They get their 6 figure salary regardless. They don't care about anchor tenants. I don't think they care about generating revenue.
In my own fan experience the handful of games I attended, it was largely negative.
One game I went to get food during the 1st intermission. I never got back in my seat until 5 mins. left in the 2nd period. I spent nearly a half-hour trying to get a plate of fries. The workers at he concession were all standing around like they had no clue what they were doing.
Now to miss almost an entire period on a $25 ticket is one thing. Imagine dropping hundreds of dollars to see a sporting event and spending 1/3 of it in the concession line-up. You'd lose your mind. Heck you'd demand a refund.
Another game, during the 2nd intermission I was in the line-up for an adult beverage up in the concourse. All of a sudden, the lady working that beverage concession puts a sign in front me saying "closed". I questioned why she wouldn't serve me and she said as soon as the puck drops to start the 3rd period, adult beverage sales are prohibited. Meanwhile while your up on the concourse, you have no idea when the puck is about to drop that I could notice. There are no screens showing what's happening out in the main area. Heaven forbid you run into someone you know and get sidetracked having a conversation. What a strange and arbitrary rule. Here I was grown man about to hand them $15 for two 355ml cans of local beer but they wouldn't take my money.
The concourse area itself is extremely dated and hasn't seen a dime of investment since the building was built back in the mid 1990s.
A 3rd visit to the city (earlier this year) they had a promotion where if you bought a 24 pack of Coors Light at a local retailer, you'd get a voucher for two free tickets to a select Growlers game. Great deal right? Went back to my hotel room to redeem the voucher online. No sir. Can't be redeemed online. I had to make a trip down to the arena box office (which is only open select hours) to redeem it and get my tickets. I get to the box office and ask the worker what was available for seats so I could pick the seats I wanted. Once again, no sir. They literally could not show me a up-to-date seating chart. They had no way to even turn the monitor towards me so I could see what was available. All they had was printed chart of each number section and the best I could do was say which section I would like, but not specify the actual seast. Once again, completely bizarre for a sports and entertainment company here in 2024. Amateur hour stuff.
So if your Deacon Sports, and you don't own or operate the arena, and your getting complaints from your paying customers about the poor fan experience, and your partner in all of this (SJSE) is unwilling to do anything to remedy the poor fan experience and get more customers into the building for games, what are you supposed to do?
Keeping in mind that ECHL by itself isn't a great draw. It's decent hockey but it's not like your watching a pile of future NHL stars in action. It's mostly just a fun night out.
All that to say you will NEVER see high level hockey (AHL, ECHL, QMJHL) in St. John's ever again. The ECHL will never try it there again. The AHL in Atlantic Canada is a thing of the past. I don't believe there is enough revenue in Major Junior hockey to make it work here with the travel costs to other teams. SJSE may one day try and get a QMJHL franchise on their own like they tried years ago but I feel like they would be told "thanks but no thanks, been there, done that".
MiamiHockeyII
Registered User
- Mar 24, 2022
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100% ... it's unfortunate for the passionate hockey fans of the Avalon Peninsula, but St John's is simply too remote to be viable in any major league.
BruinDust
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- Aug 2, 2005
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It really is. Then factor in weather issues at times flying in and flying out with fog and other weather events. Nightmares for professional sports teams on a set schedule.
All the concourse/service issues aside, the arena itself is a great place to take in a hockey game when it's nearly full. Seats roughly 6000 and not a bad seat in the house really. I went to a couple AHL Ice Caps games while there once on Saturday nights with a near full house and the arena has that low flat steel roof kind of like San Jose so it has very good acoustics and with a full enthusiastic crowd the building was rocking. I remember it kind of caught me by surprise. Probably one of the best experiences in minor pro hockey at the time really for players and fans. Growlers with the smaller crowds wasn't quite the same experience. It would really be a great arena to host a World Juniors. I think you'd get a similar atmosphere to what we saw in Halifax a couple years ago.
MiamiHockeyII
Registered User
- Mar 24, 2022
- 171
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It's likely a bit small for the World Juniors now - where they host Canada's games in venues larger than 10k - but St John's would be a perfect host for something a bit smaller like the U18 Hlinka-Gretzky Cup, the World Championship (or Women's World Championship).
I hate to see NL with zero decent hockey (sorry, but the NL Senior League is not decent). If someone was smart they'd create 3 Jr A teams to compete in the MJAHL. Two in St John's, one in Corner Brook. Travel would still be a challenge, but having three on the island can make travel bearable. I think you could make it viable by filling the roster with local kids who currently have to go to the mainland (or the People's Republic of Cape Breton) to play Tier I or Tier II Junior.
BruinDust
Registered User
- Aug 2, 2005
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There is definitely an opportunity there to capitalize on the absence of high level professional hockey in that province. It's really too bad everything costs so much now especially travel. Then factor in when the Gulf ferry gets delayed in the winter due to poor weather. From what I've heard Senior Hockey has a decent following in other parts of the province but struggles in the city of St. John's proper, probably part of that is the local hockey fans are accustomed to higher levels of hockey (AHL/QMJHL/ECHL).
OFFICIAL:
ECHL approves transfer of Trois Rivieres TO Spire Hockey ending Deacon Sports/Entertainment era in pro hockey;
www.echl.com
ECHL approves transfer of Trois Rivieres TO Spire Hockey ending Deacon Sports/Entertainment era in pro hockey;
ECHL | Premier "AA" Hockey League
The Official Site of The ECHL including news, rosters, stats, schedules, teams, and video.
www.echl.com
Lions plan going forward now that the ownership/lease has been transferred and settled for now is extending the affiliation w/ Laval/MTL
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Lions plan going forward now that the ownership/lease has been transferred and settled for now is extending the affiliation w/ Laval/MT
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Lions plan going forward now that the ownership/lease has been transferred and settled for now is extending the affiliation w/ Laval/MT
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