ORLANDO, FLA – “I think given the circumstances, Jacksonville turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse.”
The above quote came from Huntsville Havoc owner and then-SPHL Chairman Keith Jeffries on April 16, 2007. He was responding to a question about how the Jacksonville Barracudas had turned their practice rink, Jax Ice, into the site of games three and four of the SPHL President’s Cup finals.
The history lesson is relevant because the Havoc will have to play definitely one and perhaps two games of their upcoming first round playoff series at the Wilcoxon Iceplex, the team’s practice facility, instead of the Von Braun Center. The issues in Huntsville are described in a Wednesday morning story by Bill Bryant in The Huntsville Times .
The fact that Jacksonville in 2007 and Huntsville in 2011 are having issues with having to scramble to find an available sheet of ice ties the two together but the similarities end there. The way the two situations are being handled is what may be what sets them apart most.
Back in 2007, the Barracudas were swimming in red ink at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The building was less than five years old and a spectacular place to watch a game. Unfortunately, the city had contracted SMG to operate the facility and when the lease came due on March 31, 2007, SMG asked for a renewal price that the team could not meet.
The negotiations overshadowed what had been a fabulous playoff series between the Barracudas and the top-seeded Columbus Cottonmouths. With a trip to the finals on the line, Jacksonville went into Columbus and took the first two games of the best-of-five series with both contests going to overtime (game one in fact went to double overtime). Columbus took game three but the Barracudas snatched game four on Tyrone Garner’s second goal of the game.
So while the team practiced as they waited on an opponent, general manager Gilles Richard set out to find an alternative. When Fayetteville advanced to the finals, an option was to play the entire series at the massive Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville which could handle close to 10,000 people. There may have been other options but with the Barracudas wanting to take care of their fans, it was decided to use the much smaller Jax Ice.
As Mr. Jeffries said, the league thought the Barracudas did a bang-up job with what they had. The team figured out a seating configuration that would allow between 600-700 fans to attend the games. A scissor-lift was set up at one end for print media to work on (Brett Friedlander, who was covering the FireAntz for the Fayetteville Observer at the time, hated the thing. I chose to watch the game from along the boards at one end of the ice.). Arrangements were made to guarantee that the b2 internet broadcasts of games would go off as planned and they did so from another scissor-lift where the camera and then-Barracudas‘ play-by-play man Ken Vezina did the games from.
Although the crowd was small, the enthusiasm for the game was still the same and the noise was deafening. Jacksonville won game three but the FireAntz won game four to win the President’s Cup.
Four years later, Huntsville is facing a similar problem. The VBC booked a rodeo into the main arena for April 1st and 2nd. Normally this particular rodeo would swing thru the “Rocket City” in February but the VBC folks asked to be scheduled later in the season so as not to disrupt regular season games. There is also a concert tour booked into the building on Tuesday, April 5th that will require set-up and tear down time as well.
Unfortunately, these bookings directly interfere with having the ice available for playoff games. Facing having games but no ice to play on for the first round, the Havoc chose to do as the Barracudas did in 2007 and use their practice ice at the Wilcoxon Iceplex.
The playoff seedings have yet to be completely sorted out. It appears that Huntsville will be the third seed and have home ice while Columbus stands a good chance to maintain the fourth seed and have to face the Havoc. Both teams have fantastic fan bases that would think nothing of driving to the other city to cheer on their team.
I have seen and heard capacity figures for the Iceplex of anywhere from 640 to 1,000 so from that point of comparison, it is very similar to Jacksonville. It is also where the two stories begin to differ.
Jacksonville’s season ticket holder base was close to being in line with the number of spots available at Jax Ice. In the case of Huntsville, the Havoc have a significantly larger number of season ticket holders than even the higher posted number of spaces at the Iceplex. (There is also something out there about the Iceplex having only about 200 parking spaces but that is another story).
The team has let season ticket holders know that tickets can be purchased the day before the game and up to 12 noon on the day of the game at the team’s offices at the Von Braun Center. The planned availability of already purchased season ticket packages was pushed back due to “a slight printing delay”. Any tickets not sold will go on sale to the general public after 2 p.m. central time on game day.
So what does that all mean? If you are a season ticket holder and already paid for playoff tickets, you are guaranteed a seat. If you are a season ticket holder and haven’t bought a ticket yet, you will have a window of opportunity to buy one and secure a place inside the building. If you live in Columbus or wanted to travel in to see the game, you will most likely be completely out of luck unless enough Havoc season ticket holders decide not to go that there is a surplus of tickets available less than five hours before the puck drops.
Not a problem you say because the game will be broadcast on the AmericaOne (formerly b2) network for a nominal fee? Well, from all indications, the Wilcoxon Iceplex is not wired to provide the necessary bandwidth to send the feed out of the building. Sources close to the league told me Tuesday that there were no plans at that time to rectify the situation so the SPHL was working with the premise that no broadcast would be available. Columbus fans who would also have an option to pick up the game via a free internet audio feed through the team’s website or on WRCG-FM will have to hope that broadcaster Mike Vee’s “air card” (wireless internet adapter) works inside the Iceplex.
The broadcasts on AmericaOne have become a staple of the SPHL’s reach. The broadcasts serve a triple purpose. The first, and most obvious, is that they allow fans to follow their teams on the road. The second, and arguably most important, is that the broadcasts are a way for the families of the players – most of whom are from Canada – to see their boys play. Finally, having the games on AmericaOne has become a steady source of income for the teams and the league. Not having the games in Huntsville available will likely leave a mark both from a public relations and a financial standpoint.
A third, and seemingly less urgent, issue is how will the working media get its work done. Since the Huntsville Times’ office is less than three miles from the Iceplex, Bryant or whomever the Times assigns to cover the game can go back to the newsroom to work. For my colleague Kathy Gierer of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, the situation is a bit more complicated. As of Monday, she was guaranteed a seat at the game by the Havoc staff. However, with no wireless internet access available, she will have to get some help to submit her story which because of the time zone change will be pushing the print deadline for the morning edition. In her blog on Wednesday, she said that Columbus general manager and head coach Jerome Bechard was working with her to figure out a way to get the story sent back to Columbus in time.
Huntsville head coach Randy Murphy told the Huntsville Times that he’s seen minors league teams have to scramble to find an alternate sheet of home ice before. He also acknowledged that the scheduling of the rodeo by the VBC was a business decision by the building. The coach even plans on telling his team that the smaller building can be used as an advantage.
For its part, the league is looking at the overall situation as a “make the best of it” opportunity. Just like it did in 2007, there is a very good possibility that everything will work well and the game or games will go off without a hitch.
I can understand the reluctance of the Havoc to give up their home ice advantage by playing the entire series in Columbus – an option that was reportedly floated but rejected. Huntsville worked hard all season and earned the right to have at least one and maybe two games in its own building.
That being said, if all of the alternative plans are maintained as they presently stand, there is a very large risk of angering parts of three of the SPHL’s most loyal constituencies not to mention some decently-sized financial holes to fill in. Could some things be fixed? Possibly, but it will take some work and needless to say money to do so. The problem is that things like league and team reputations can’t be easily repaired once they are broken, even in the smallest of ways.
The SPHL playoffs just got a bit more interesting.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.