Editor’s note Local hockey historian and author Timothy Gassen is telling the story of Tucson hockey through the years. Next week: The Arizona Icecats transform into the Wildcats and face their most difficult challenge yet.
The first two parts of this series told the stories of Tucson’s minor-league hockey struggles — of the Mavericks, Icemen and Rustlers — through the memories of others. I arrived in the Old Pueblo just as the Rustlers faded in 1979.
But I am part of the second era of modern Tucson hockey, from 1980 to now. That era is dominated by Tucson’s most successful ice hockey team to date — the club team from the University of Arizona — but there’s also more woe and heartache in the pro ranks for Tucson to digest.
It was a full 18 years after the demise of the Pacific Hockey League Tucson Rustlers when the Gila Monsters finally brought the pros back to Tucson. They played in the West Coast Hockey League, a circuit comparable to Single-A baseball, and the WCHL’s lower level of play was a difficult sell in Tucson.
But Tucson seemed like a market ready and open for pro hockey in 1997, with its previous failures forgotten or unknown by the then-current generation. What excited the Tucson sports fan, though, also seemed completely unknown to the Gila Monsters organization. They completely underestimated Tucson as a college-sports town, with the UA first, second and perhaps even third in the locals’ minds and pocketbooks.
A minor-league hockey team could survive in second place in a Tucsonan’s heart, but it won’t stay in business long at No. 4.
Then there were the Arizona Icecats, the UA college club team that started playing its games in the TCC in 1980. They built a loyal, vocal, rabid following, often pulling more than 5,000 fans in per game and regularly selling out the TCC for tilts with archrival ASU. The quality of their play was extremely high in the late 1980s into the 1990s, and for several years they operated almost as if they were a Division I varsity program — though still in the club ranks, self-funded and not associated with the UA athletic department.
From the outside, say in Edmonton, Alberta, it could appear to an investor that the Icecats were just a little college club — like flag football, perhaps? — and the Gila Monsters sealed their fate quickly by making them an almost instant enemy.
The Gila Monsters and Icecats staff bickered publicly. It was ugly.
I saw it all firsthand as one of the Icecats’ most dedicated followers. I started as a fan, then began writing about the team, traveling to away games and national tournaments, and then later working professionally as their media director and radio play-by-play man. I am a proud UA alum, they were my homegrown team, and I understood viscerally the local pride that thousands of other Tucsonans shared with the Icecats.
The Gila Monsters, though, seemed to ooze a “We’re Canadians, and you Tucsonans don’t know hockey” attitude — an arrogance I still battle as I travel throughout North America on hockey business.
Gila Monsters owner Stephen Mandel never seemed to understand the ire of UA fans and their loyalty to an amateur club team. The Gila Monsters declared bankruptcy halfway through their first season, then folded 21 games into the next season in 1998. Like the pro teams before them, the Gila Monsters cited poor management of the TCC and inadequate revenue splits with the city as other nails in their coffin.
It didn’t help that they won only 23 games over that season and a half and averaged only about 1,000 fans a game. The atmosphere was mostly dull and unenthusiastic compared to Icecats games. The perceived attitude of, “We’ll throw out a puck and Tucsonans will be grateful to give us their money” certainly contributed to the Monsters’ financial disaster.
In April 1998 Mandel told the Tucson Citizen, “If we can’t sell 1,000 season tickets, there’s something wrong with us, not the city.” But by December of that year, as he folded the team, his parting shot to Tucson was, “It’s a wonderful town, but it’s a (bad) one for sports. Anyone who’d come here would have to be crazy.”
It worked out fine for Mandel, though. He returned to Canada, was elected mayor of Edmonton and then was appointed Minister of Health for Alberta.
Tucson’s last attempt at pro hockey — until the new AHL Tucson Roadrunners — is probably the least known, because the team didn’t even play a game. The 2000 Tucson Scorch had more qualified Tucsonans in their front office, including businessman Ben Beuhler-Garcia, and clearly had more local credibility. The team seemed to understand that integrating themselves into the community was job No. 1, and Beuhler-Garcia was an effective local ambassador.
I created TV commercials for the team in the summer of 2000 and was slated to add color commentary for the radio game broadcasts that fall. We were busy with preseason production work, and a good-quality team was assembled and had started practicing. We were literally gathering up everything to head to the first game when the fairytale ended.
The team’s out-of-town owner failed to post a financial guarantee needed to start play in the Western Professional Hockey League. Just like that, in one moment, the Tucson Scorch was gone. The WCHL folded at the end of that 2000-01 season anyway, another unstable league with Tucson as an unstable hockey city.
So there is a salient checklist that these new Tucson Roadrunners should learn from the failed attempts at Tucson pro hockey, including: Get your deal with the city and TCC right in the first place (check), have ownership and a parent team with the funds to survive over the long haul (check), and offer play at a high level (check).
There are a couple of other important items on the list that are still waiting to be checked. Do the Roadrunners understand the unique Tucson market, do they need Tucsonans involved, or is a marketing budget all they need? How will the Roadrunners coexist with all UA sports, and will Tucsonans care this time if the survival of their once-beloved college hockey team is threatened?
Ah, you see, nothing is simple in Tucson when it comes to ice hockey. But the answers are coming.
