The challenge for people like me — those whose lives have been changed forever by ice hockey — is always the same: explain exactly why hockey is important to our community.
And now that Tucson has its greatest on-ice opportunity ever with the placement of an American Hockey League professional team downtown at the Tucson Convention Center, that challenge must finally be fully met.
Professional hockey has not yet succeeded in Tucson, so naysayers might flippantly assume that this new franchise will automatically meet the same oblivion of the 1970s CHL Tucson Mavericks and SWHL Icemen, the 1990s WCHL Gila Monsters, and 2000 WPHL Scorch.
But Tucson and Arizona today, and the circumstances surrounding this new team, are critically different than those past attempts.
The previous failures were in lower-level minor leagues, poorly led by owners who never held the complete combination of local roots, deep pockets and marketing acumen.
This new AHL team will compete in the highest minor circuit — just below the major National Hockey League level — in a league whose history is almost as long as the NHL’s and just as important to hockey. The AHL estimates that 90 percent of all NHL players have played with an AHL team.
The team is owned by the NHL Arizona Coyotes, just up the road in Glendale, and is an obvious trumpet to the hockey world that professional hockey will stay — and thrive — in Arizona.
Players on their way up to the majors, and Coyotes rehabbing or re-developing, will grace the Tucson roster.
Hockey in the West has also evolved since the earlier attempts in Tucson. Nearby San Diego has its own checkered history with professional hockey, but the new San Diego Gulls are just completing their first AHL season as a wild success, boasting more than 8,000 fans a game at an older arena that hosted failing teams all the way back to the 1970s.
The Arizona State University club hockey team this year made an amazing jump up to the NCAA Division I level, an accomplishment thought absolutely impossible during the past two decades — and success on the ice has been possible in Tucson, too.
The men’s club team from the University of Arizona, formerly known as the Icecats, regularly placed in the top five for attendance for all levels of U.S. college hockey, won a national championship (and played in four more championship games), and brought high-quality play to Tucson that was on par (and sometimes beat) NCAA teams.
Operated since 2011 by the UA’s Campus Recreation Department, the renamed Arizona Wildcats club team still plays at the TCC, but its winning ways and attendance has eroded considerably.
The explosion of hockey interest surrounding this new AHL pro team could also bring a sympathetic tidal wave of momentum back to the college hockey Cats and help them regain their amazing place in Arizona sports history.
Downtown Tucson has also grown and is ready for more family-oriented events, and U.S. cities the size of Tucson (and smaller) have found that a minor-league hockey team not only energizes an arena district, it also changes the business perception of the city both inside and outside the state. Just by existing, the positive business psychology of Tucson will be boosted by this anchor tenant for the TCC.
The naysaying of those who don’t understand the needed investment of taxpayer dollars to make the TCC pro-hockey ready should be packed up and put away with artifacts of Tucson’s past pro hockey failures. This is the right time, the right place, and the most beautiful sport for Tucson to re-discover with the arrival of the AHL.
Now if only I can convince the NHL Coyotes to name the Tucson team “The Roadrunners,” in honor of the first pro hockey team in Arizona’s history. I even know where the “Rocky Roadrunner” mascot head sits, waiting to come back to life — just as professional hockey in Tucson is ready for rebirth.
