Wenatchee biggest winner in Ice off-ice saga in WHL

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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