To the delight of hockey fans state-wide and afar, the Arizona Coyotes’ resurrected their white Kachina jersey prior to last season. It was part of a throwback rebranding for the Tempe-based National Hockey League club.
A little over a year later, the Coyotes’ top minor league affiliate is following suit.
The American Hockey League’s Tucson Roadrunners (7-4-1-0) will debut their new alternate sweater Saturday night, when it takes on the San Jose Barracuda (7-5-0-1) in Tucson Arena.
The jerseys include the Roadrunners’ full-body Kachina logo, created to mimic the stick-wielding coyote used by the parent club from 1996-2003.
The black Kachina became Arizona’s primary home uniform in January 2021, with the white version following ahead of the 2021-22 campaign. The Coyotes’ jersey includes green as the key accent color, with red, purple, sand and orange also incorporated. Tucson’s version uses the same color scheme, but slightly adjusted. Purple is the lead accent — appearing most prominently on the shoulders and tail.
Those purple accents are part of why Saturday’s game was chosen as the debut, Hoffman said.
Saturday marks Hockey Fights Cancer night in Tucson arena, and purple has been a primary color used for such awareness events across North America through the Hockey Fights Cancer program.
While the Coyotes have since made their version of the jersey the centerpiece of their everyday road kits, the Roadrunners white Kachina will be worn as part of “Kachina Saturdays” in Tucson Arena — a marketing promotion the team has utilized in recent years. Prior to this season, it was Tucson’s black Kachina jersey worn on select Saturday home games. While that jersey won’t be mothballed forever, Hoffman said the black version will be shelved for a bit while the white jersey gains its own traction.
“It’ll be back in two years. We’ll pull it back in future years as a throwback, or a reverse retro,” Hoffman said of the black jerseys.
Hoffman added that the Roadrunners aren’t looking to go full-time Kachina — at least not yet.
“That was a conversation we had with the Coyotes because they went to full Kachinas with the white and the blacks,” Hoffman said. “It was like, ‘Do we want to look at doing that?’ We love our reds and our whites so much, and the bird is so iconic that we’ve been trying to build here.”
Cracknell sets record
They say records are made to be broken — and, never say never — but the Roadrunners’ newest club best will surely be hard to beat
At the start of the Roadrunners’ Saturday Nov. 11 home game, an eventual 4-3 overtime loss to the Coachella Valley Firebirds, Tucson forward Adam Cracknell won the opening faceoff to defenseman Cam Crotty. Crotty then pushed the puck to fellow blue line Victor Soderstrom, who chucked it up ice to a streaking Mike Carcone.
Carcone’s effort was stopped by Coachella Valley goaltender Joey Daccord, but Cracknell was there to whack in the rebound. All told: the fastest goal to start a game in Roadrunners’ history, at barely nine seconds into the match.
The previous fastest two goals for Tucson: 18 seconds in, by former defenseman Cole Hults on March 2 of last season at Texas. Just 10 days later, current Roadrunner top scorer Carcone netted one 22 seconds in at Ontario.
At the NHL level, the fastest goal scored from the opening puck drop is 5 seconds in. That’s happened three times (Doug Smail for the Winnipeg Jets in 1981; Brian Trottier for the New York Islanders in 1894; Alexander Mogilny for the Buffalo Sabres in 1991).
In the AHL record is five seconds in (Wayne Blanchen for the Syracuse Eagles in 1975).
Cracknell, in his first season with Tucson, and the club’s captain, now owns the Roadrunners’ record for both fastest goals to start a game at home. On Oct. 22, he scored 57 seconds in against Bakersfield in Tucson Arena.
McCartney added that with three sets of back-to-back games over this current homestand, much of the adjustments and preparation for the second leg of those series can’t be physical.
Condensed schedule helps Tucson
The finale of a six-game homestand Sunday against San Jose at 4 p.m. marks the Roadrunners’ sixth game in 10 days.
After a 7-2 loss to visiting Henderson Tuesday gave Tucson losses of some kind (two in regulation, one in overtime) in each of the first three games on this homestand, Tucson players were more than happy for a quick turnaround. And their result Wednesday proved as much.
A night after giving up five third-period goals to the Silver Knights, Tucson blew out to a 5-0 lead Wednesday in the rematch.
“It’s always good getting games under your belt as quick as possible because you start getting in to a groove,” Tucson forward Ben McCartney said this week. “And you don’t have to wait four or five days after a loss.”
McCartney added that with three sets of back-to-back games over this current homestand, much of the adjustments and preparation for the second leg of those series can’t be physical.
“You’ve just got to be mentally prepared,” he said. “You play a lot of games during the year and you’ve just got to be ready every single day.”
