Stayin' alive

The newly minted Thunder Bay North Stars are struggling on the ice. There’s no doubt about it.

Losers of four straight following Friday’s 2-1 shootout loss to the visiting Dryden Ice Dogs, the Stars really can’t be blamed for their poor play, given what’s been happening behind the scenes.

The team, known until Friday as the Fort William North Stars, was on the verge of folding. In fact, the team actually did cease to exist for a few short minutes, until Superior International Junior Hockey League officials allowed a group of seven investors to step in and resurrect a franchise that has taken seven straight trips to the league final.

The investors – unknown to date except for Marvin Pelletier – have contributed $70,000 to save the team. They’re still looking for more investors and another $30,000, but for now the team has the go-ahead from SIJHL president Ron Whitehead to continue operations.

“We’re still looking for more help,” Howarth said, a day after making a public plea for investors to step forward. “I don’t know what the people of Thunder Bay are doing. That was a great hockey game tonight. It was unbelievable. We went to a shootout, it was two teams battling back and forth. The pace of that game was incredible.

“There were a lot of great hits. We just need more people to help this organization stay in Thunder Bay. We’ve had seven really good people step up and get this team going, and I think we’re going to go in the right direction.”

The Stars are one of the league’s two remaining charter franchises, the other being Dryden. Entering their 10th season in the league, rumours of issues surrounding former owner Gerald Bannon’s financial woes began to surface.

The league is believed to have held emergency meetings, and ultimately was forced to ask Bannon to step away.

Ultimately it led to Wednesday’s game against Wisconsin being postponed, the team’s future hanging in the balance.

With crowds hovering in the 150 range at Fort William Gardens – and things were no different Friday night – trying to cover a budget Whitehead estimated to reach as high as $300,000 was next to impossible.

Howarth said poor marketing has played a role in why the team has drawn flies in recent years; if only hockey fans, who turn out in droves to support the university-level Lakehead Thunderwolves, realized the depth of talent being fostered by the North Stars organization, things might be different, he said.

The veteran coach pointed to success stories, like goaltender Carter Hutton, who signed with San Jose and is playing for their American Hockey League farm team in Worcester, Mass, and defenceman Robert Bortuzzo, another AHLer playing in the Pittsburgh Penguins organization.

“We’ve got to be doing something right,” said Howarth, who is not one of the investors involved. “We’ve won it five times. We’ve been to the national championship. We’ve lost in the Dudley Hewitt Cup final two years by a goal. It’s a great program. It just needs to be retooled again, that’s all.”

The club is reaching out to anyone and everyone, and is even making a pitch to the city’s NHL stars, like the Staal brothers and Patrick Sharp, hoping they might see the value of keeping junior hockey in the city and be willing to pitch in.

Whitehead, who still knows little about the actual people behind the purchase, said the league, which expanded to the United States on a full-time basis this year, desperately wants to keep a team in its flagship city.

The city’s relative remoteness doesn’t help its cause, Whitehead said, meaning the new owners will have to be inventive to find the dollars to stay afloat.

“You have very few head-office scenarios, where you can go after major sponsorships. Obviously it would help all the teams in the league was sponsored and therefore they had no costs in the running of the league.

“Thunder Bay is still the cornerstone of the league, particularly on the Canadian side, and in my opinion that it’s adamant that you have to have a solid franchise in Thunder Bay,” Whitehead said.

The team is saddled with an unfavourable lease at the Gardens, a venue owners feel they have to play out of to be considered watchable by fans. The Thunderwolves, born the same year as the Stars organization, own the rights to all the advertising in the rink, a deal struck with the city during lease negotiations.

At the time the Stars protested, but to no avail. They do get a percentage of the concessions during home games.

Whitehead said success may lie in re-educating fans about the brand of hockey the Stars bring to the city. Fans who flocked to see the Thunder Bay Flyers have stayed away, though the calibre is equal, Whitehead said.

“We’ve fought that and we’ve fought that and I don’t know what else we can do about it. This is legitimate junior A hockey. Those same teams that are sending someone like Kyle Turris direct to the NHL are the same guys we’re playing against. It’s right there,” Whitehead said.

Star gazing: Mitch Forbes gave the Stars (9-4-1) the lead late in the first, but Dryden’s Ben McLellan evened the score midway through the second when Thunder Bay goalie Jay Pelletier gave the puck away in his crease. Brendan Wertanen, the Ice Dogs fourth shooter, won it in the shootout.

 

First period
Scoring: 1. Fort William, Forbes 5 (unassisted) 17:30. Penalties: Desserre TB (high sticking), Brown TB (holding) 7:15, Brueggeman DRY (high sticking) 12:46, Galbraith TB (hooking) 19:01.

Second period
Scoring: 2. Dryden, McLellan 6 (Allaire, Vadnais) 10:30. Penalties: Remple TB (slashing) 8:25, Usiski TB (high sticking) 14:44, DiLoreto DRY (holding) 17:47

Third period
Scoring: No scoring. Penalties: Remple TB (roughing) 2:45, Vadnais DRY (interference) 4:53, Perrier DRY (tripping) 15:42.

Overtime
Scoring: No scoring. Penalties: Kuhn DRY (hooking) 0:48.

Shootout
Dryden: McLellan (scores)
Fort William: Forbes (scores)
Dryden: Ransom (miss)
Fort William: Hogan (miss)
Dryden: Tamasy (miss)
Fort William: Usiski (miss)
Dryden: Wertanen (scores)
Fort William: Henley (miss)

Game Data – SOG – Dryden 7-6-7-1-21, Thunder Bay 11-7-10-6-34; Power plays (goals-chances) – Dryden (0-6), Thunder Bay (0-5); Goaltenders – Dryden: Ian Perrier, Thunder Bay: Jay Pelletier; A: 150.