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| The Ice celebrate a goal in Game 1 of the WHL final on May 12. |
The Winnipeg Ice are no more and the Wenatchee Wild era has
begun.
On Friday, the WHL announced that the Winnipeg Ice franchise
was sold to David and Lisa White of the Shoot the Puck Foundation. The Shoot
the Puck Foundation is a non-profit organization based in California. The
franchise has relocated to Wenatchee, which is located in the state of
Washington in the United States.
The Whites through the Shoot the Puck Foundation own the
junior A Wenatchee Wild franchise that had played in the British Columbia
Hockey League since 2015. The Wild won the Fred Page Cup as BCHL champions in
the 2017-18 campaign and the Doyle Cup as the Canadian Junior Hockey League’s Pacific
region champion.
The Wild appeared in the Canadian Junior A national championship
tournament in 2018 known at the time as the Royal Bank Cup, which was held at
Prospera Centre in Chilliwack, B.C. Wenatchee posted a 2-2 record in round
robin play and fell in a tournament semifinal 2-1 to the Wellington Dukes from
Ontario.
Wenatchee was the only U.S. centre to have a team playing in
the BCHL.
With the purchase of the Ice WHL franchise, the Whites own
what was once Winnipeg’s membership in the major junior circuit. A relocation
of a franchise was executed without the use of any moving trucks.
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| Zach Benson in action for the Ice in the WHL final on May 13. |
The Wild as an entity will be promoted up from junior A to
major junior. As part of the WHL, they will play in the U.S. Division that will
now have six teams.
The division will provide the Wild instantly with four
in-state rivals in the Everett Silvertips, the Seattle Thunderbirds, the
Spokane Chiefs and the Tri-City Americans. The Portland Winterhawks, who have
been one of the circuit’s elite clubs for the past 14 seasons, round out the
U.S. Division.
The Wild hockey operations and business staff that is
already in place will now operate the club in the WHL. The hockey operations
staff is under the direction of general manager Bliss Littler, and Chris Clark
is the club’s head coach and assistant general manager. After the announcement
that Wenatchee was in the WHL was made, the Wild on Friday put up job postings
for a full-time athletic trainer and a full-time equipment manager.
Wenatchee will play out of the Town Toyota Centre that has a
seating capacity of 4,300.
The Ice roster and protected list is transferred to the
Wild. The fate of the Wild’s BCHL franchise is still to be determined outside
of the fact the BCHL said it won’t operate in 2023-24.
As for the players that were part of the Wild’s junior A
roster, BCHL commissioner Steve Cocker told Castanet on Friday there won’t be a
dispersal draft and the players are now free agents.
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| Matthew Savoie in action for the Ice in the WHL final in May 12. |
As of June 1, the BCHL began governing its teams outside of
Hockey Canada’s system. With the departure of Wenatchee, the BCHL has 17 teams
all operating in British Columbia. It hasn’t been addressed if the BCHL’s
decision to leave Hockey Canada’s system played a part in the Wild owners
electing to leave that circuit for the WHL.
While the community of Wenatchee was the biggest winner in
this development, it wasn’t a positive development on a tonne of other fronts.
If you check out social media on Friday and Saturday, you can find a boatload
of disappointment and hurt feelings over the sale of the Ice franchise.
In the 2010s, the WHL pursued a vision of having a team in
each capital city in Western Canada. That vision was realized when the Ice
franchise under the ownership of 50 Below Sports + Entertainment Incorporated
headed up by Greg Fettes and Matt Cockell began playing at the 1,600 seat Wayne
Fleming Arena on the University of Manitoba campus at the start of the 2019-20
campaign.
Fettes served as the Ice’s governor, and Cockell was the
club’s president, general manager and alternate governor.
The Ice franchise had been relocated from Cranbrook, B.C.,
where the club was known as the Kootenay Ice. The Ice franchise was sold to
Fettes and Cockell on April 27, 2017 by the Chynoweth family.
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| Carson Lambos in action for the Ice in the WHL final on May 12. |
Fettes and Cockell moved the Ice to Winnipeg with the
promise they would be able to build a new arena for the team to play in that
was up to WHL standards.
The Ice put out a statement by Fettes on Friday and part of
that statement regarding building a new arena said, “Unfortunately, we were just
never able to get the project on solid footing due to the changing landscape
(during and post-pandemic). Simply put, we ran out of time.”
While there has been criticism Fettes and Cockell took the
WHL for a ride, it is possible to say it was true the onset of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic that gripped the world causing massive shutdowns in March
of 2020 caused any efforts to build a WHL sized arena that would seat 4,500 to
5,000 spectators to go up in flames.
If anyone has seen the news cycle, stories on economic
inflation dominate it, so anyone who lives in reality knows the chances of
getting the funding together to build a new WHL size rink in Winnipeg were
remote. It is safe to say Fettes and Cockell don’t have those types of assets in
the bank to build a rink on their own.
Still, how the WHL’s situation played out in Winnipeg will
invite heaps of criticism, and the criticism is deserved. The WHL does come out
of this saga sporting a look that it got suckered.
Gregg Drinnan, who is still the all-time dean of WHL
sportswriters, took a deep dive on his Taking Note blog of the many levels of
how ugly the Ice saga is, and that piece can be found by clicking right here.
He could probably wrote a longer piece than he did, and that is crazy to think
about.
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| HC James Patrick mans the Ice bench in the WHL final on May 12. |
While the Ice were a mess off-ice with their arena situation,
the Ice’s on ice product was far from a mess. In fact, the Ice were one of the
WHL’s best teams on ice in the four seasons they played in Winnipeg posting a
166-49-6-2 mark in regular season play.
In 2021-22, the Ice topped the WHL’s regular season
standings with a 53-10-3-2 mark and advanced to the WHL’s Eastern Conference
Championship Series falling in five games to the eventual league champion
Edmonton Oil Kings. This past season, the Ice again topped the WHL’s regular
season standings with a 57-10-1 mark and advanced to the WHL Championship
Series falling in five games to the Thunderbirds.
If you were able to travel to Winnipeg, you would have found
out the Ice developed a following. On the coverage priority of the local sports
media, the Ice were buried well behind the NHL’s Jets, the CFL’s Blue Bombers
and the AHL’s Manitoba Moose.
While the majority of the attention was on those three
professional teams, it is a disservice to say the Ice had no fans in Winnipeg.
They had a fan following, and that fan following got burned.
Ice head coach James Patrick is one of top first class
hockey guys you will find in hockey. He is now living in his hometown without a
team to coach. If the Jets do decide to go in the direction of a total rebuild,
Patrick would be a perfect candidate for a potential future new head coach in a
start over scenario.
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| Fans watch the Ice play in Winnipeg in the WHL final on May 12. |
The Ice had good people on their hockey operations and
business staff, and now they will all be out of work.
The Ice players will still have a chance to play in the WHL,
but now they have to adjust to a new community.
The community of Cranbrook, which was home to the Ice from
1998 to 2019, still feels burned by the WHL. The Ice were successful for most
of their years in Cranbrook having won WHL championships in 2000, 2002 and 2011
and the Memorial Cup as CHL champions in 2002.
During the Ice’s final season in Cranbrook in 2018-19, they
finished last in average attendance in the WHL averaging 2,214 spectators per
game for their 34 regular season home dates, but there were people there who
still felt the team could turn around and experience brighter days again in
that community.
In October and November of 2015, there was a local based
group in Cranbrook that talked to Chynoweth family about possibly purchasing the
Ice, but nothing came out of those talks. It is likely failure of that attempt to
purchase the team and keep it in Cranbrook hurt some in the community there.
Jeff Chynoweth, who oversaw the Ice’s operations, and his family
began trying to sell the Ice in 2011 and the team stayed for sale until the
deal was reached with Fettes and Cockell in April of 2017. It should be noted
that Cranbrook is a tourist industry town and the Chynoweth family was faced
with the constant task of reintroducing the game to new fans during the Ice’s
time in that centre.
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| Daniel Hauser in action for the Ice in the WHL final on May 12. |
Life also changed for the Chynoweth family with the passing of
patriarch Ed Chynoweth in April of 2008. Ed played an instrumental role as a builder
in the history of the WHL. Ed’s passing and the unique challenges to marketing
the team in Cranbrook had Jeff and his family looking to get out of the WHL
ownership game.
Still, there were a lot of Ice supporters in Cranbrook who
hold ill will toward Jeff Chynoweth over when his family sold the Ice.
Along with that, the City of Cranbrook has a lawsuit against
the Winnipeg Ice and the WHL that is still before the courts regarding the
arena deal the Ice had with the B.C. centre that was to run through to June of
2023.
On a sentimental front, other group that lost out in this
saga are the alums of the Ice franchise. The alums especially the ones that
played for the Ice during their days in Cranbrook often have great memories of the
B.C. centre.
It is common for alums of other WHL clubs to return to their
former teams when they are older and have families for visits. Those visits
often include alums getting pictures taken with their families in their old
dressing room stalls during the summer months. There are Ice alums that lament
they can’t partake in doing something like that.
On top of that, the Ice franchise identity will now cease to
exist on the WHL landscape. While the Wenatchee owns the Ice WHL franchise, the
Wild team identity will continue to be used, and it will go on as continuation
from that club’s junior A days in the BCHL.
In the end, the WHL’s experiment with the Ice in Winnipeg
failed. Had True North Sports and Entertainment the parent company that owns the
Jets and Moose had interest in owning a WHL franchise, the major junior circuit
might still be in the Manitoba capital.
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| The Ice salute their fans after Game 1 of the WHL final on May 12. |
Overall, at least the franchise transfer was done at this
early juncture of the off-season, so all parties that have a stake in what is going
on know where they stand. From an “it is what it is” perspective, the ugly is
there.
If you have any
comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them
to stankssports@gmail.com.
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.JPG)
