IceCaps to be moved to Thunder Bay in 2016 or 2017?

[Chungo]

I think we are looking at 5,500 seating last time I looked. Either way I would say 7,000 seats should be built IMO.

 

[no Gino]

I don't understand what the AHL requirements are for an arena. Will Thunder Bay play in an arena that seats 4600?

Even if TB sells out, they would be below league average and ranked about 16th. Heck, there are ECHL and Central league teams that draw more than 4600.

I guess, in this case, the AHL really doesn't get to decide in which market the team plays. However, I would think they could set a minimum capacity for barns in which league teams play.

The current proposed arena is to have a capacity of 5700 although previous discussion was as high as 6500. Feasibility studies estimated average attendance for an AHL team in the city to average around 4600 per game.

 

[BigZ65]

Veteran players go where they get the most money/the best chance to get called up.

I'm talking about guys on AHL deals.

If you have offers from Chicago, Austin, San Antonio and Thunder Bay, where are you signing?

As a minor-leaguer making low 6 figures, I'm going to Texas, no income tax and decent sized metro areas.

 

[GareFan18]

The current proposed arena is to have a capacity of 5700 although previous discussion was as high as 6500. Feasibility studies estimated average attendance for an AHL team in the city to average around 4600 per game.

Is it publicly or privately funded?

I will believe it when they break ground. Canadians, to their credit, don't seem to be as willing to throw public money at these things as we are in the US.

Still, I think it's sad the 2nd best hockey league in North America, arguably the World, plays in 4600 seat arenas.

 

[no Gino]

Is it publicly or privately funded?

I will believe it when they break ground. Canadians, to their credit, don't seem to be as willing to throw public money at these things as we are in the US.

Still, I think it's sad the 2nd best hockey league in North America, arguably the World, plays in 4600 seat arenas.

AAA baseball (PCL) draws around 5000 per game, International league slightly more. I think the drop off from major leagues of hockey to their next highest level is very similar.

 

[Rumblick]

I'm talking about guys on AHL deals.

If you have offers from Chicago, Austin, San Antonio and Thunder Bay, where are you signing?

As a minor-leaguer making low 6 figures, I'm going to Texas, no income tax and decent sized metro areas.

Veterans also go where they'll be allowed to play, make money and have a chance to play for a title. Hershey & Chicago never have trouble getting players to sign with them. The Canadian teams always have a good supply of vets as well. If they can pay, they'll go to the Bay.

 

[IslesFan96]

The president of the IceCaps, Danny Williams has already approached NHL teams to get another team here in St Johns. As well as WPG and the NHL said they will help Williams bring another team here. He is also looking at buying a franchise

 

[Chungo]

Is it publicly or privately funded?

I will believe it when they break ground. Canadians, to their credit, don't seem to be as willing to throw public money at these things as we are in the US.

Still, I think it's sad the 2nd best hockey league in North America, arguably the World, plays in 4600 seat arenas.

Still looking for private funding last time I heard (might be wrong).

I agree with you as well... Might be an agreement withTNSE to pay for some of the arena though. Apparently, deal in place will keep the University hockey team in TBay.

 

[Tommy Hawk]

"Many" is overstating it a little. There's probably six or seven, but when you consider metro area populations the number of sub-100K AHL areas is probably two or three.

From the list provided, there were 9 which is almost a third of the teams that were around 100k or less.

From the below list:
Manchester
Binghampton
WBS
Albany
St. John's
Hershey
Glens Falls
Portland
Utica

And if you go to about 150 you can add Rockford, Springfield, Syracuse, Bridgeport, Hartford but I will give that the Hartford and Bridgeport metro areas probably bring their totals up over 200k.

Forgiveness please, but used most honorable google-fu to compile populations of AHL cities.

Springfield MA 153,552
Manchester NH 110,209
Binghamton NY 46,551
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton PA 41,243+75,809
Albany NY 97,904
Norfolk VA 245,782
Providence RI 178,432
St. John's NL 100,645
Hershey PA 14,257
Worcester MA 182,669
Glens Falls NY 14,609
Syracuse NY 144,170
Portand ME 66,214
Bridgeport CT 146,425
Hartford CT 124,893
Grand Rapids MI 190,411
Toronto ON 2,503,000
Abbotsford BC 123,865
Milwaukee WI 598,916
Rosemont/Chicago IL 4,230+2,715,000
Hamilton ON 504,560
Rockford IL 150,843
Rochester NY 210,532
Charlotte NC 775,202
Oklahoma City OK 599,199
Cleveland OH 390,928
San Antonio TX 1,383,000
Utica NY 61,822
Des Moines IA 206,688
Cedar Park/Austin TX 57,957+842,592

Like 210 said if you take the greater metro areas into account there aren't many under 100,000 in population. Technically Rosemont is the smallest at 4,230, but its pretty much a part of greater Chicago. Hershey and Glens Falls are next 14,000, but they draw very heavily from their surrounding towns. It would be kinda humorous and amazing to picture well over 2/3rds of Hershey's population showing up to every home game though

Nice.

The president of the IceCaps, Danny Williams has already approached NHL teams to get another team here in St Johns. As well as WPG and the NHL said they will help Williams bring another team here. He is also looking at buying a franchise

Who is he going to "buy" from? The only reason Comcast sold was they were tearing down where the Phantoms were playing which then resulted in the elimination of synergies between the Phantoms and the Flyers (shared practice facilities, administrative staff, etc.)

All the NHL teams are starting to get smarter about their AHL teams, either owning them and keeping them close or getting a boatload of money in affiliation fees.

 

[210]

From the list provided, there were 9 which is almost a third of the teams that were around 100k or less.

From the below list:
Manchester
Binghampton
WBS
Albany
St. John's
Hershey
Glens Falls
Portland
Utica

And if you go to about 150 you can add Rockford, Springfield, Syracuse, Bridgeport, Hartford but I will give that the Hartford and Bridgeport metro areas probably bring their totals up over 200k.

And when you consider metro areas how many are under 100K?

 

[HamiltonOHL]

and Montreal won't take on st.john's as a farm team bc they plan to move to laval once the arena is done

 

[Exarz]

Doesn't the Ice Caps have a good attendance?

 

[Disengage]

Doesn't the Ice Caps have a good attendance?

They've sold out every game. It's not about attendance, the Jets just want their affiliate closer.

 

[adsfan]

Forgiveness please, but used most honorable google-fu to compile populations of AHL cities.

Springfield MA 153,552
Manchester NH 110,209
Binghamton NY 46,551
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton PA 41,243+75,809
Albany NY 97,904
Norfolk VA 245,782
Providence RI 178,432
St. John's NL 100,645
Hershey PA 14,257
Worcester MA 182,669
Glens Falls NY 14,609
Syracuse NY 144,170
Portand ME 66,214
Bridgeport CT 146,425
Hartford CT 124,893
Grand Rapids MI 190,411
Toronto ON 2,503,000
Abbotsford BC 123,865
Milwaukee WI 598,916
Rosemont/Chicago IL 4,230+2,715,000
Hamilton ON 504,560
Rockford IL 150,843
Rochester NY 210,532
Charlotte NC 775,202
Oklahoma City OK 599,199
Cleveland OH 390,928
San Antonio TX 1,383,000
Utica NY 61,822
Des Moines IA 206,688
Cedar Park/Austin TX 57,957+842,592

Like 210 said if you take the greater metro areas into account there aren't many under 100,000 in population. Technically Rosemont is the smallest at 4,230, but its pretty much a part of greater Chicago. Hershey and Glens Falls are next 14,000, but they draw very heavily from their surrounding towns. It would be kinda humorous and amazing to picture well over 2/3rds of Hershey's population showing up to every home game though

Rosemont is basically across the street from O'Hare Airport and the city of Chicago. Cook County (Chicago area) has 5.2 million residents, with 8.9M metro residents.

The 2012 estimated population figure for the city of Milwaukee! Milwaukee County, which isn't very big as counties go (less than 1200 sq miles) has 1,000,000 people, the 45th most populous county in the US. The 5 county metro area is obviously a little larger, about 2.0 million people.

I believe that the Toronto metro area has around 4 million people.

Grand Rapids (Kent County) has 600,000 residents and a metro population of 1M.

The Glens Falls MSA has about 130,000 residents, 9 times the city population. Glens Falls borders on Saratoga County, which has a lot of wealthy residents.

I appreciate the hard work putting that info together. I think that county or metro area populations might give a more accurate figure of potential fans for AHL teams, but your point is well taken!

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

Milwaukee County, which isn't very big as counties go (less than 1200 sq miles)

It's way smaller than that. Technically that's what the county size is but 950 square miles of that is water, so really it's more like 250 square miles.

 

[LARGECAT DAMPHOUSSE]

Thunder Bay would fill this arena for at least as long as the Jets themselves could conceivably be expected to survive. There's really no doubt about it locally. Anyone who's been to a few Thunderwolves games would affirm the quality of the support any AHL/OHL team would receive--the fan support and sponsorship in T-Bay has already enabled a crappy university using a crappy arena in a far-remote part of the province to thrive and go to the CIS championships several times. They are consistently good and the games are genuinely exciting (I would say about 15x as enjoyable as the Griffins games I went to in Grand Rapids over the past several years, notwithstanding their modern arena and their excellent players...). A professional team in a newer, but still intimate, arena is a very obvious step for Thunder Bay, and one that True North can count on without any reservations, as evidenced by this announcement.

My sincere hope is that the new arena will be built in the downtown Port Arthur location to go along with the ongoing waterfront development. That part of town is really turning into a nice place to live and frequent, and the arena would both add to this and feed off exposure to the marina's heavy pedestrian traffic and the business that is already bringing. With adequate underground/parkade parking, as well as the arena's proximity to the P.A. bus terminal, going to the game would be a smooth and enjoyable process, not to mention the positive influence the games would have on the P.A. night-time scene. Building the arena near the Innova Business Park (on the corner of Golf links and the Harbour Expressway) would not ameliorate traffic congestion during game times; rather this would clog up two important thoroughfares (Fort William-Port Arthur and T-Bay Expressway-Intercity) during rush hour, and presumably make entrance to the arena dependent on a single suburban-style feeder road, which, no matter how many lanes they choose to add to it, would become a nightmare (the same thing is already happening with the recently finished four-lane expansion of Golf Links, which is no easier to use, although the addition of the parallel bike trail is appreciated). The choice the city faces here is between solidifying the mistake it already made in building Intercity in the way it did (which made the city's car culture all-consuming and therefore both aesthetically displeasing and inefficient) by doing the same thing on the western side of the city, and the possibility of making a huge step in their ongoing programme of urban renewal for both of the downtown cores. Building near the Expressways is, in my opinion, clearly the regressive option.

This is really a very awesome piece of news for Thunder Bay residents. They have been waiting for this for a long time. True North is doing a good thing for them, and in return there is going to be a solidification of the Jets culture and fan following in the Northwest, whose Leafs fans (and also Sens fans) have already been alienated by both distance and disgust over perpetual poor performance. It is not an accident that TSN-Jets already serves the Northwest. An AHL team in Thunder Bay would effectively claim everything past the Sault as Jets territory, and honestly probably make Thunder Bay-ans culturally Manitoban in their own self-understanding (note too Thunder Bay's 'strange' NDP leanings as pre-existing evidence of this trend!).

That said, the announcement should spark sincere sympathy for all Newfoundlanders. But no matter how isolated Thunder Bay itself may feel, to its residents St Johns is just as far off the map and insignificant as Dryden is to Torontonians. Expect ruthless praise for the decisions to come.

Anyway, does anybody have speculations on the new nickname?

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I think I saw on the Winnipeg Jets board that there were rumors around the team that they'd just be called the Thunder Bay Jets for brand cohesiveness, but absolutely nothing definitive on that as far as I know. Still a ways to go though, so probably no announcement on the horizon. Might even go for a name the team contest like so many teams these days.

 

[Exarz]

They've sold out every game. It's not about attendance, the Jets just want their affiliate closer.

Oh, I see.. What if the Nordiques makes it back in an expansion, wouldn't that be a close affiliate?

 

[Mightygoose]

For potential nickname. What about Thunder Bay Moose? Jets are not bad, but I always like to seem the farm team use a different than the parent club.

 

[GareFan18]

The list of AHL cities is woefully inaccurate. Professional sports franchises care much more about area of dominant influence or metro statistical area than population of the city in which they play. It took me about 15 minutes to put together this list. Allentown, St. John's and Glen Falls are included.

Thunder Bay will be the smallest market.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area 9,522,434 1
Toronto (Mississauga) 5,583,064 1
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC Metropolitan Statistical Area 2,296,569 1
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area 2,234,003 1
Cleveland-Elyria, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area 2,063,535 1
Austin-Round Rock, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,834,303 1
Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,699,925 1
Providence-Warwick, RI-MA Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,601,374 1
Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,566,981 1
Oklahoma City, OK Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,296,565 1
Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,214,400 1
Rochester, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,082,284 1
Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area 1,005,648 1
Worcester, MA-CT Metropolitan Statistical Area 923,762 1
Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 874,646 1
Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ Metropolitan Statistical Area 827,171 1
Hamilton (Burlington) 721,053 1
Syracuse, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 660,934 1
Springfield, MA Metropolitan Statistical Area 625,718 1
Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA Metropolitan Statistical Area 588,999 1
Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area 563,629 1
Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area 553,980 1
Portland-South Portland, ME Metropolitan Statistical Area 518,117 1
Manchester-Nashua, NH Metropolitan Statistical Area 402,922 1
Rockford, IL Metropolitan Statistical Area 346,009 1
Kalamazoo-Portage, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area 330,034 1
Utica-Rome, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 298,064 1
Binghamton, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 248,538 1
St. John's (Mount Pearl, Conception Bay South) 196,966 1
Abbotsford - Mission 170,191 1
Glens Falls, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area 128,472 1
Thunder Bay 121,596 1


sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_census_metropolitan_areas_and_agglomerations_in_Canada

 

[IceCapsHabs]

What AHL teams are NOT owned by their NHL affiliate ? Trying to see what teams might be for sale to move to St. John's, NL when the IceCaps leave

 

[Disengage]

What AHL teams are NOT owned by their NHL affiliate ? Trying to see what teams might be for sale to move to St. John's, NL when the IceCaps leave

Off hand: Syracuse, Chicago, Hershey, Portland, Providence, Springfield, Norfolk, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Rockford, OKC, and Texas.

That said, it doesn't mean much. Teams don't have to be sold to move.

 

[dre]

The short answer.... YES!

We have the largest amount of NHL players per capita

We sellout Canadian University Hockey with Lakehead Wolves

We do have a extended pop. That brings it up to 110,000.

I'll be looking for season tickets!

Not totally comparable, but think of Thunder Bay as the Green Bay of hockey.

Not that I don't think this can work but I just wanted to point out that Thunder Bay lost its UHL and USHL teams. I know we are a hockey town and all but this is not exactly a slam dunk.

 

[Rumblick]

What AHL teams are NOT owned by their NHL affiliate ? Trying to see what teams might be for sale to move to St. John's, NL when the IceCaps leave

Off hand: Syracuse, Chicago, Hershey, Portland, Providence, Springfield, Norfolk, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Rockford, OKC, and Texas.

That said, it doesn't mean much. Teams don't have to be sold to move.

I wouldn't be so sure that it "doesn't mean much". Aside from the OKC problems, those listed are among the most stable franchises in the league. You've seen affiliate bouncing (and a million or so Springfield rumors), but the franchises themselves are solid long-term properties.

 

[IceCapsFanNL]

Yeah,

But Williams is very wealthy, very determined, very well connected. Having a team here keeps him in the limelight, which he clearly enjoys. If he wants a team. It will happen