Winnipeg Ice sold to David White, will relocate to Wenatchee, Washington
- Thread starter MMC
- Start date
I just don't see how there was supposed to be enough support to go around between an NHL team, an AHL team, a WHL team, a college team, and a second in province WHL team. Manitoba could be the most hockey crazy market on earth but it simply doesn't have the people or money for all of that.
Apparently Wenatchee didn't tell the BCHL about this at all. The league found out through Dreger's tweet.
jetsmooseice
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Unreal.
According to the Brandon Sun, the ICE players found out yesterday via social media too.
Weird enough that teams of high schoolers regularly trade players like they're pros midseason but relocating across an international border en masse when you're like 16-17 is kind of wild (no pun intended)
MeHateHe
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Brutal. Imagine you’re 18, planning to spend the year in a large NHL city with lots of non-hockey activity, job and education options, and then find out on Twitter you’re going to Wenatchee. That’s a terrible introduction to the new ow
jetsmooseice
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Practically everyone got the shaft here.
Would it really have killed the WHL to have provided a bit of notice here? Clearly the WHL doesn't give a shit about its fans, but for cripes sake, do they not want to even pretend they care about their chattel? er, I mean, players and staff?
MeHateHe
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Drinnann’s got a great summary, although I think he got some ideas from us.
greggdrinnan.com
WHL adds team to U.S. Division . . . Winnipeg Ice on way to Wenatchee, Wash. . . . Wild becomes sixth American team after sale . . . Governors approved deal on Tuesday
The WHL’s vision of having a franchise in each of the four western Canadian province’s capital cities — Victoria, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg — lasted four seasons. The dream was realized in 2019…
greggdrinnan.com
rsteen
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Don't all 16 and 17 year old CHLers have essentially no trade clauses? I know in the OHL they do.
Pretty rough for a 17 year old from the Prairies who thinks he would be playing relatively close to home to have to pack up for a different country and high school system.
Never a fan of the chl acting like a pro system of trading players that are 16-18 (not done with high school).
BadgerBruce
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The so-called “No Trade” protection applies to players attending high school, which should mean a kid’s first two CHL seasons (one season in Quebec, where high school goes to grade 11), but it is largely a mirage. If a team wants to trade a kid, they just tell him that he needs to accept the move or he can kiss his ice time goodbye. The only guys shielded from this are 16 year-old rookies, who can’t be traded until January, so they get half a season where they aren’t trade eligible.
I agree. With the AHL so intrenched here and having an NHL team its too much I think. We only have 750k in the peg. If it was owned TNSE and their were no Moose it would be successful.
jetsmooseice
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Support was never the issue. The ICE didn't leave because they didn't sell enough tickets or whatever. The lack of a venue that made the WHL happy was the problem. The WHL didn't like it because they looked like asses insisting that small towns like Moose Jaw break the bank on palatial new arenas when a team like Winnipeg was making it work in the short term with Wayne Fleming Arena. It exposed the league and they couldn't allow it to go on.
PCSPounder
Stadium Groupie
If the BCHL was thinking they wouldn’t go unscathed from the point when the word first went out about the troubles with the Ice, not to mention that Chilliwack and Wenatchee were the first two cities mentioned… seriously?
MeHateHe
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Considering he still owns a franchise in the league, David White is still business partners with the 17 other owners/groups. No honour among thieves and all that, but wouldn't you want to keep something of a relationship with those guys?
jetsmooseice
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Maybe he's wealthy enough that it just doesn't matter to him?
On a related note, how much does the WHL register in the minds of the typical Wenatchee resident? Will there be any meaningful difference to them in terms of BCHL vs. WHL? The Wild seem fairly well supported, I wonder how many more fans moving to the WHL would realistically bring out of the woodwork for them.
The fans that are local will migrate to the WHL but what is more important here - the fact that the relative closeness of Wenatchee to every other US Division city and how well the fans around this division travel means they'll have a lot more out of town fans coming in. Meaning that for most if not all US Division games, those will be sellouts guaranteed. And the visitors will bring with them $$ to pump into the local economy which at that time of year is somewhat slow (although the folks up the highway in Leavenworth may beg to differ).
MeHateHe
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The hockey world is pretty small. Pissing off your business partners is risky: you might need one or two of those guys at some point. You're right that it didn't matter, but a little professional courtesy - even a couple days' notice - wouldn't have cost them anything. In addition to the owners, you also have 20 hockey players who are stuck in limbo, and some of them will have player agents who now don't trust you. This kind of stuff impacts a lot of people.
Wenatchee's TV comes from Spokane, most likely, and Spokane's media talks a lot about the Chiefs. I suspect that most sports fans there are aware that the WHL is a step up from the BCHL and that the WHL acts as a feeder league to the NHL.
They also get TV from Seattle too and Seattle (the Fox affiliate specifically) carried the T-Birds WHL title games when the Ice were in Seattle. There was and is never any mention on local TV about the BCHL. A note and that is in Wenatchee there is a local access TV channel called NCW Life that the Wild presumably have had games broadcast on in the past and that might be an avenue for them to educate fans about the new league.
I can't help but wonder if Wenatchee is prepared for this change. From what I understand, it will be the same coaching/management staff working with the WHL team from the BCHL. Are these guys all up to date on rules and regulations? Do they have the scouting staff to cover WHL scouting necessities? What kind of trades are we going to see? They have basically no draft picks for the next four years after what Winnipeg did over the past two years, are they going to trade everyone (Savoie, Geekie, Benson, Hauser) to recoup those assets? Or are they going to keep them and go for it since they want to try and get the fans excited right from the get go? I'm so curious how this first year is going to play out for them.
MeHateHe
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It's a good question. Bliss Littler was telling a blogger that they have to hire a whole new scouting staff, and noting that while the BCHL was a recruiting league - like college - whereas the WHL was more focussed on the draft and its results. That's a bit mistaken, because a big chunk of the recruiting work is convincing kids (and parents) to come after they've been selected via the draft, and convincing them that major junior is better for development than Junior A and/or US college.
The blog is here. Bloggers who put white text on a black background need to have their heads examined.
Wenatchee Wild - Winnipeg ICE to Relocate
Wenatchee Wild owners David and Lisa White have purchased the Winnipeg ICE, moving the team to Wenatchee, Washington.
www.area51sportsnet.com
Is the current coaching staff adequate for WHL? Hockey is hockey after all. Is there a marked change in tactics between Junior A and major junior? Major junior teams have more and better high-end players and the stakes are higher, but are systems in major junior that much more tactically challenging than in Junior A?
MeHateHe
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There have been discussions around here about what other US markets would be available for the WHL, but there aren't a lot of other options that work when you consider geography and available facilities. The league spent a year or so in Billings, which did not turn out well, and there is/has been junior hockey in places near the Canadian border, like Minot (SJHL), Billings and Butte, Montana (AWHL), Bismarck (AWHL) and Bellingham (BCJHL). I'm not sure any of those make a lot of sense for the reasons listed, and some have also speculated about Boise, but that's a long way from anywhere. Seems to me @PCSPounder has advocated for Eugene as another Oregon location, but again, I don't know what they have for an arena there.
GKJ
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Interesting point I heard on 32 Thoughts that can get expanded on here. The BCHL did what they did because they want to give more opportunities to kids who want to play in college.
The first real move made after that is the exact opposite. They lose a team to the competing, more lucrative, league. One owner just totally bailing on them. And you know someone else has to be thinking about that.
Is the BCHL going to replace them? Find a spot for these kids? Everything about this move was done in the dark, apart from knowing the situation in Winnipeg was untenable.
The first real move made after that is the exact opposite. They lose a team to the competing, more lucrative, league. One owner just totally bailing on them. And you know someone else has to be thinking about that.
Is the BCHL going to replace them? Find a spot for these kids? Everything about this move was done in the dark, apart from knowing the situation in Winnipeg was untenable.
jetsmooseice
Let Chevy Cook
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I can tell you that the skeleton-like local sports media here in Winnipeg doesn't pay much attention to the WHL apart from wire copy about ICE game results and Bedard. So there has been hardly a word uttered about the ICE's departure beyond simply acknowledging that it happened which is kind of crazy, you would think it would generate at least some discussion.
But the ICE owners never said anything in publicly except for a "sorry, we tried our best" after the fact, and the media didn't really have the inclination or ability to dig deeper. It may have been one of the most unnoticed and unremarked-on departures of a significant hockey team from a Canadian city ever.
