“Do you know what’s on TV right now?” I ask a host of people on Wednesday night at a minor-league hockey game in Tucson.
And I’m not talking “Property Brothers,” though they do some terrific wainscoting.
I figure if you’re going to spend a weeknight watching future pros on the way up and former pros hanging on for dear life, you’ve got to be some kind of sports fan.
As I chat with Emanuel and Lacie Griego, there is one out left in the bottom of the eighth inning of the World Series, yet here they are, at Tucson Arena, watching the third home game of the Tucson Roadrunners’ young season.
That they were missing Game 7 of the World Series didn’t seem to faze them.
These are hockey people, puckheads, and now they’ve got something to watch.
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“I don’t even like the Coyotes, but this is fully my team now,” said Emanuel, and he’s got the $24 T-shirt to prove it, fit snugly around his Minnesota Wild jersey.
That sure didn’t take long.
I’ll admit it: I was a skeptic when I heard the American Hockey League was coming to town.
Hockey is a great sport, and there may not be a better game to watch live, but we’re about as far from the Original Six as you can get in this country. Canucks and Oilers fans might look at a cactus as a foreign object. H-E-double-hockeysticks, a handful of miles south, and we’re in another country altogether, and I wasn’t sure if Canada’s game would hold up in Tucson.
The NHL’s Coyotes struggle to fill their seats with home-town supporters, and to be fair, after a sellout crowd for Friday’s opening night, the Roadrunners drew just 2,071 fans on Wednesday. That they went up against a Cubs-Indians grand finale that will be the talk of baseball writers in 2216 didn’t help matters.
But that shouldn’t be a sign of things to come, or at least, I hope it’s not.
This team deserves a chance in Tucson. The sport deserves a chance.
And the Griegos, among others, are going to give it to them.
“I’ve been texting my friends – dude, you’ve got to get here,” Emanuel said. “This is high-level hockey for cheap. You can’t beat it. Half of the players will be in and out of the majors. You can’t see that for this close and that cheap.”
Griego is right – the AHL is on the doorstep of stardom, not simply trying to get through the fence.
AHL vice president of communications Jason Chaimovitch said as much on Wednesday as he took in the Roadrunners 4-3 overtime loss to the visiting Texas Stars: he put the number at 375 players among the 30-team league who suited up in at least one NHL game and one AHL game last season.
“These are guys who will be in the NHL, and soon,” he said. “On any given night, you’re going to see guys in Tucson who’ve already played for Arizona or will play for Arizona, and if you turn on a Coyotes game, you’ll see six or eight guys who played here first.”
That has to be the biggest draw: The hockey is good. And fun.
Midway through the first period, the teams scored three goals in 83 seconds, an outburst that left the Roadrunners trailing 2-1 but the fans thrilled.
Minutes after chatting with the Griegos, Tucson’s Ryan MacInnis, the son of NHL Hall-of-Famer Al MacInnis, tussled with Texas’ Jason Dickinson. Dickinson landed one directly on the chin with a roundhouse, but MacInnis came back with a haymaker and dropped him. The crowd went wild. As the legendary Rodney Dangerfield said, “I went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out.”
“No More Mr. Nice Guy” blared over the loudspeakers. Then “Bad to the Bone,” and they clapped in unison. The smell of mini-donuts and maxi-beers filled the air.
A minute later, Tucson tied it up. They really cheered now.
All-in-all, not a bad night of hockey in Tucson.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Craig Cunningham, the Roadrunners’ 26-year-old forward and captain, said after the game. “It’s a great city, nice weather, and it’s a great facility. It’s nice being closer to Arizona; they’re watching us, they’re a lot more in check with what’s happening down here.”
That kind of “synergy,” as Chaimovitch said, has been happening more and more in the AHL as parent clubs pair up with AHL squads in local markets. The Los Angeles Kings have their Ontario Reign — who come to town this Friday and Saturday to kick off what could be a sizzling rivalry — and the Anaheim Ducks jumped into the fray with the San Diego Gulls, a franchise that moved from Norfolk, Virginia to help form the AHL’s new Pacific Division in 2015.
“We’re not actively looking for markets to go to, but it’s about what best fits the need of our affiliates,” Chaimovitch said. “There’s been a shift over the last few years in the philosophy of the parent clubs to get their affiliates close geographically for hockey purposes but also to build on those synergies. It’s a natural fit for the Coyotes to have their AHL affiliate in Tucson.”
From an outsider’s perspective, that seems to make a ton of sense.
Why lock down just the middle of Arizona when you can own an entire state? I’ve long wondered why the Diamondbacks moved their Triple-A affiliate from Tucson. Why not just put some affiliate here, any level, just to create a bond? There’s something special about following a kid’s march toward fame and glory. You get hooked.
“You’re watching guys you’ve watched in the NHL on TV and they come down here, and also guys you hope one day will be playing themselves on FS1,” said Tucsonan Leif Klein, decked out in a Coyotes shirt. “To see them as young guys coming up, to see what they’ve learned down in Tucson, that’s great.
“Absolutely I think Tucson will become a hockey town,” he continued. “We’ve had the (Arizona) Icecats, and I was a fan of them, and I still come to Icecats games. But to bring a team like the Roadrunners here, I think it will blow up.”
Klein is Tucson born-and-bred, a military man, housed over at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Thursday would be a day off for him. What better way to spend it than by watching some puck?
“This is my first Roadrunners game, and seeing the upgrades already from two or three years ago, it’s amazing,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff here they didn’t have just a few years ago, and that alone will bring a good amount of people here.”
Like Klein, the Griegos are in. They’ve been waiting for this, a bandwagon on which to hop.
Lacie is from Pennsylvania, and she said for six years she’s hoped for hockey to come to town. When the Roadrunners were announced, she says she was “stoked.”
“I hope Tucson can support it,” she said. “I liked the Padres, but I feel like Tucson didn’t do the best job of supporting the minor-league baseball there. I’m hopeful this time.”
