Fans' support was instrumental in keeping Roadrunners in Tucson

Athletes often credit the 12th man or the sixth man — the fans — for the team’s success. The Tucson Roadrunners’ seventh man helped them stay in the Old Pueblo.

On Thursday, the team hosted a press conference with city officials and fans, calling it the Roadrunners 2024-25 season welcome. Rio Nuevo board chairman Fletcher McCusker said the fans’ support was big in keeping the team in Tucson.

Near the end of last season, when the Roadrunners’ future was in doubt, supporters began circulating a petition to keep the team in town.

At the end of May, the AHL Board of Governors voted to approve the Roadrunners’ plan to play 30 games in Tucson and six in Tempe after there was talk of moving the team up north full-time or playing half their games at Mullet Arena on the campus of Arizona State University.

“The petition that you generated was in the Board of Governors packet when they opened that packed up to discuss this team’s relocation to Tempe,” McCusker said. “That made probably more difference than anything any of us did was to see the level of fan support to other team owners.

“You have to remember how hockey board of governors work, the people that were gonna vote on whether or not to move the Tempe are owners of other teams and they immediately saw the fan appreciation and the value of keeping the team in Tucson, except for that we would otherwise be having this press conference in Tempe,” McCusker added.

The NHL’s Arizona Coyotes bought the Springfield (Massachusetts) Falcons and relocated them to Tucson in 2016, renaming them the Roadrunners. However, this April, the Coyotes’ owners sold the team to a group in Utah and moved them to Salt Lake City, retaining ownership of the Roadrunners.

“To see the fans rally the way they did, that certainly showed (how much they support the team),” said Tucson Roadrunners president Bob Hoffman. “You like to think you’re making an impact but you don’t always know and that showed in the team’s eyes at least that there was an impact being made, that this community rallied behind the organization and let their voice be heard.”

Tucson city manager Tim Thomure said fans like Mark Kerr, known for leading chants at Tucson Arena, had an impact. Kerr, a longtime City of Tucson employee, has been a huge fan of the team since it moved here.

“What may seem obvious but I just want to make sure it’s stated, that was fan driven: that wasn’t orchestrated,” Thomure said, “that wasn’t the city saying ‘do this’ that wasn’t the team saying ‘do this’ it was fans like you in this room and across the city that said ‘this means the world to us to keep the Roadrunners in Tucson’ and you did that through networking, through social media, through the grapevine and through the 30 texts I got from Mark Kerr.”

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After moving back from a half-Tucson, half-Tempe plan, a report had the Roadrunners playing 14 games in Tempe and 22 in Tucson.

After the plan was changed to 30 in Tucson and six in Tempe, Rio Nuevo and then the Tucson City Council approved it.

The league’s 72-game schedule will be announced in July. Tucson’s home opener will be Saturday, Oct. 19 at Tucson Arena.

“It’s just amazing because that groundswell was genuine, it was authentic and it was effective and that’s the fans doing something that the Rio Nuevo, the city and the team could leverage to help,” Thomure said. “So my gratitude to all of you that signed up for that, who spread the word because you did have an impact.”

Hoffman said ownership wanted to do what was best for the franchise, and making the Roadrunners a state team was certainly very attractive.

“This was never adversarial, the first Zoom meeting we had with ownership, our city manager was wearing a Roadrunners cap and it was irresistible, we were not there to battle, we were not there to criticize their decisions,” McCusker said, “we made it clear from the beginning we wanted the Roadrunners here, the fans wanted the Roadrunners here, the city wanted the Roadrunners here Rio Nuevo as the owner of this venue wanted the Roadrunners here.”

Slap shots

On Thursday Utah HC announced they won’t return to Tucson for a preseason game. The last two seasons the Coyotes played preseason games in Tucson.

Utah’s home games in the preseason will be in Salt Lake City and Des Moines, Iowa.