I had wanted to see the WHL here in Winnipeg for many years since I first saw a WHL playoff game between Brandon Wheat Kings and Medicine Hat Tigers back in 2011... thought why not one here? and later on when the WHL Kootenay Ice were moving here, I thought finally we can be part of the WHL but had concerns about how the Ice team was accepted here, like if it is enough as we already had the NHL Jets and the AHL Moose ... seemed some good ones but the main problem like everyone say here in this topic, a new arena was needed .. one major roadblock was TSNE with the NHL arena, which was why it was hard to get a new secondary arena going fast.. also the Ice owners here should have done better but I heard they were gonna be "loss leaders" meaning they can afford to lose some money while owning the team.. and the U of M arena was smaller as I can see on tv via internet steaming as I saw a few Ice home games this recent season...
I already had bought a Wpg Ice hat and pennant and was planning on maybe buying a Wpg Ice jersey and finally go to the WHL Ice games but now that it all was done with the sudden move from Manitoba to Washington state.. that gonna hurt for a while but maybe in the future a proper ownership group can manage to get a new arena set up (with 100% no interference from TSNE which I'm suspicious of blocking anything due to the main arena contract that says only the top arena in Winnipeg for games and concerts and etc if I remember one article from years ago??) and then get a team to move to Winnipeg and be set up right finally.. can only dream about that for now... Just my opinion, really TSNE and even the old Ice owners should have set aside the big issues and worked together to ensure we have junior hockey here for the long term but I guess not... just sad to lose the team after only 4 years of their move from BC...
I am not a TNSE apologist by any means but I don't think TNSE can be held up as the bad guy here. It was reported when Canada Life Centre was first built that TNSE's agreement with government stipulated that no public subsidies would be paid to any competing arenas within the City of Winnipeg. This was a reasonable request given the large amount of money that TNSE put up to build the arena.
You need to note two things about this: that agreement does not prevent anyone from putting up their own money to build a rink. Also, even if the agreement didn't exist, I'm not sure the political will would be there to subsidize a second rink. The City of Winnipeg has been pretty strapped for cash since the pandemic and I'm not sure that dumping money into a secondary arena would be politically astute right now. This is not Moose Jaw where the WHL is the biggest game in town, the WHL had its fanbase but it was still a bit of an afterthought in Winnipeg. Politicians would not be tripping over themselves to give money to Fettes and Cockell even if the TNSE agreement wasn't preventing them from doing so.
I guess you might say that TNSE could have provided the ICE with a home at CLC, but they didn't owe that to Fettes and Cockell. They could have done it, but it was totally their prerogative to say no. While playing CLC would have saved the team, from my perspective, having ICE games at CLC would have been a downgrade from playing at the U of M. At least the atmosphere at the U of M was good even if there were only 1,000 fans in the building. Having that few people at CLC would have made it absolutely dead. Plus paying CLC prices for everything would have sucked.
Totally agree that it's sad to lose the team after only four years, though. They may not have been front page news in Winnipeg but the ICE were definitely carving out a following. There will never be bang for the buck like that in Winnipeg ever again from a hockey perspective, at least not within our lifetimes haha.
