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Leith Dunick
Keith McCullough, left, and Anthony LeBlanc
Anthony LeBlanc and Keith McCullough are coming home – they hope.
The Thunder Bay duo, principals in Ice Edge Holdings Inc., announced Monday they’ve officially entered into talks with the ECHL in an effort to bring a professional hockey team to their hometown. The plan, first reported on tbnewswatch.com on July 8, remains contingent on the city and/or a private developer constructing a new multipurpose facility to replace the aging Fort William Gardens.
"It is the most important aspect of any future plans we may have, be it the ECHL or any other league that we’ve investigated, it is an absolute requirement that a new facility is in place," said LeBlanc, who spent the day showing ECHL president Brian McKenna around Thunder Bay, including a tour of the Gardens and a meeting with city manager Tim Commisso.
LeBlanc said a team could exist at Fort William Gardens for a maximum of one season - though the city already has a lease agreement that makes the Lakehead Thunderwolves the arena’s primary tenant. It’s also home to the Superior International Junior Hockey League’s Fort William North Stars.
The news comes on a day that saw the group announced it had found a private investor to purchase the NHL’s struggling Phoenix Coyotes, months after Ice Edge became the leading contender to secure the bankrupt squad.
The move, if agreeable to the NHL’s board of directors, would make Ice Edge a minority owner of the franchise and advisors to the unnamed investor, who McCullough said plans to keep the team in Glendale, Ariz., a sticking point in the ongoing saga to find new owners for the team.
LeBlanc said he plans to be involved in the arena discussion to help expedite the process, but reiterated Ice Edge likely won’t be a primary investor in a new facility in Thunder Bay.
Instead, if a new centre is built, LeBlanc said they are more than willing to provide an anchor tenant in the form of an ECHL franchise, which would guarantee more dates than the Thunderwolves, which hosts about 20 regular and non-conference games a season, plus playoffs.
McCullough said there’s every indication that Thunder Bay could work for an ECHL club, two rungs down from the NHL on the professional hockey ladder.
Assuming they could get an affiliation agreement with an NHL team – and the league has such agreements with 25 of 30 clubs – about 40 per cent of salary costs would be covered under the deal. That would leave the rest of the salary base, travel and other subsidiary costs for the ownership group to pay.
To make that work, they’d need between 4,200 and 4,500 fans per game on average, a number that doesn’t faze the former Yale University forward in the least.
Professional hockey has tried and failed in the past in Thunder Bay, a fact McCullough is well aware of, naming both the Thunder Bay Senators and the Thunder Bay Thunder Hawks of the old Colonial Hockey League, which couldn’t make the economics work to stay afloat.
McCullough said conditions are different in today’s financial world.
"There’s always been the Canadian dollar that’s taken any team that’s played in this building for a ride," McCullough said after a short news conference in the Fort William Gardens lobby. "We’re much more comfortable with the currency situation versus where it has been."
"But ultimately it’s about this arena. If you have a modern-day facility, as opposed to the one we’re standing in today, it puts the team in a much better position, both from a branding perspective and from a long-term sustainability perspective, I suppose, in terms of proving its mettle. "We think Thunder Bay has every opportunity to prove itself as a great fan base to support a team for a long period of time."
The city has already begun setting aside money for a new multipurpose facility, taking an added $15.6 million for a variety of projects, the most notable being a proposed $60-milliion arena complex.
They also plan to petition the provincial and federal levels of government to kick in a portion of the cost.
McKenna, who was not at Monday’s news conference, told tbnewswatch.com on July 8 that the league was definitely interested in hearing what Ice Edge’s partners had to say.
"From the ECHL’s point of view we certainly are willing to explore it further," he said last month.
He added the usual minimum requirement for an expansion team is a 6,000-seat facility. And according to the Naples (Fla.) News, a Chicago-area expansion team slated to start play at a 9,400-seat facility in Hoffman, Ill. in 2011-12 has been asked to secure US$250,000 in promotions and sponsorships and at least 1,000 season ticket holders before their first game is played.
Thunderwolves president Rory Cava said Monday that he’d like the opportunity to argue in favour of the university team taking over the prime occupancy of a new arena, should it get built, and that the school could likely fill the required number of dates a city-commissioned arena study said would be necessary to make the venture work.
"I can only speak for the Thunderwolves hockey team, but I think the university has also said there are other events – convocation possibly, other varsity sports – that they would put in there," Cava said.
City council expects to be presented with another multipurpose centre study in September.