The Return III opens its extended run at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Saturday.
As with any sequel, a sense of familiarity begins to creep into the proceedings. Just as you kind of know what to expect from any installment in the Stars Wars or Freddy Krueger franchises, so too in sports — where they like to call it tradition.
That’s what the Victoria Royals would like to build. So the opponent for the first two games of the 2013-14 Western Hockey League season, as it was the first two seasons, will be the Vancouver Giants in a home-and-home set beginning Friday at the PNE Pacific Coliseum.
The natural rivalry against the Giants is something the Royals want to grow, although Vancouver has been in a lowly cycle since Victoria inherited the Chilliwack Bruins in 2011-12 as the WHL returned to the capital for the first time since owner Rick Brodsky abruptly moved the Victoria Cougars to Prince George in 1994-95.
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It’s those little things the Royals organization is banking on as it continues the task of building its brand in a city that likes hockey but in which you can also run, cycle, golf, row and sail all year long as a duffer or all the way to the Summer Olympics, and in which team sports such as lacrosse, rugby, soccer, basketball and baseball also have their devoted fan bases following the Shamrocks, Highlanders, Vikes and HarbourCats.
“My personal observation is that Victoria is a different market than Prairie cities that are all about hockey,” said Cam Hope, the former New York Rangers assistant general-manager, who enters his second season as general-manager of the Royals.
“There are so many other options here. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for us at all.”
The upcoming third installment of The Return is pivotal as the freshness and baby-blush that helped carry the first two Royals seasons wears off and fans start demanding more. Hope plans to keep them coming back, a task that should be made easier with a team of some legitimate promise with 21 returnees.
“We want the experience in the arena to be that fans leave saying: ‘I have to do that again … I have to be there,’” said Hope.
In the Royals’ first season, the return of the WHL to Victoria had a pent-up demand that sold itself as the Royals finished seventh in league attendance with an announced 5,660 per-game average. It was one of those rare occasions that was immune from what happened on the ice, which was a tepid 24-41-7 season followed by a quick 4-0 ouster at the hands of the Kamloops Blazers in the first round of the playoffs by a Royals franchise that began life six years earlier as the Chilliwack Bruins.
That adrenalin rush of community interest largely carried over into the second Victoria-based season, with an improved Royals team that established a franchise record in wins at 35-30-7 while this time taking two games off the Blazers before another first-round playoff exit.
Pointing out just how crucial this third season is on so many fronts, the Royals dropped nearly 500 fans per game from 2011-12 to an announced 5,189 in 2012-13, despite a vastly improved team. That was still eighth best overall last season in the WHL — which ranged from the No. 1 Calgary Hitmen at 9,300 to the 22nd-ranked Prince George Cougars at 1,840 — yet pointed to the first-year novelty glow wearing off.
With the ouster after the first season of GM-head coach Marc Habscheid, a carry-over from Chilliwack days, the new management team of GM Hope and head coach Dave Lowry, a 19-season NHL role forward with a good handle on the game, engineered last season's franchise highs.
But it is telling that those 35 wins stand as the team record and that it was only the second winning season in Chilliwack Bruins/Victoria Royals franchise history. The franchise has never advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs.
The Bruins/Royals franchise has among the most undistinguished pedigrees in the WHL. Yes, it’s still young at just eight years old this season, and Royals owner Graham Lee and the entire Royals management organization is wholly different and has no connection to the Chilliwack group. But club records do carry over on the books and this is the direct continuation of that very same Bruins franchise — no escaping that. And the club’s seven previous seasons is an eternity in major-junior hockey – more than two full cycles in how player development works in this business.
In that time the Bruins/Royals franchise has produced only one NHL regular, no small detail in a league whose marketing slogan boasts of “building the best hockey talent in the world.”
And even that player, Roman Horak, played only one season for the lowly Calgary Flames before being sent down last season to spend most of this time with Abbotsford in the American Hockey League. Only two other Bruins/Royals have seen NHL ice time with Oscar Moller spending a sporadic 87 games with the Los Angeles Kings before returning to Europe and career minor-leaguer Nick Holden getting in seven games with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The other two touted players in franchise history were Ryan Howse, who split last season between Utah of the ECHL and Abbotsford of the AHL, and Kevin Sundher, currently with Rochester of the AHL.
Compare that to the banner hanging in the Interior Savings Centre in Kamloops boasting of WHL Blazers grads such as Jarome Iginla, Shane Doan, Scott Niedermayer and Crofton-product Doug Bodger.
Yet there are other names on the Blazers banner of fame whose names won’t immediately be recognizable outside of Kamloops.
The latter points out that the NHL angle is a hype and unjustifiably oversold by major-junior hockey. Only between five to seven per cent of major-junior grads ever play a single game in the NHL. Most will end up in the AHL, ECHL, Central League, CIS, Europe or washed out of hockey altogether and into civilian careers content to be playing on the weekends or late-nights with their home-town beer buddies.
“We haven’t had first-round draft pick but that's important only in so far as it goes,” said Hope.
“As long as we create an environment that helps every player reach the best level they can be at, then we’re doing our part.”
Of the current non-rookie Royals, the best chances for NHL careers look to ride with forward Steven Hodges and defenceman Keegan Kanzig, third-round draft picks respectively of the Florida Panthers and Calgary Flames, forward and fifth-round Buffalo Sabres draft pick Logan Nelson and potential high-round 2014 NHL draft pick defenceman Joe Hicketts.
The 15-16 Royals year-old group is showing flashes of promise but it’s far too early to be making predictions about them.
Until the Royals get their first breakout player, the names that will still resonate for old-school Victoria WHL fans are from the Cougars era — Mel Bridgman, Rick Lapointe, Grant Fuhr, Barry Pederson, Brad Palmer, Greg Adams, Paul Cyr, Mark Morrison, Gary Lupul, Curt Fraser, Rich Chernomaz, the Courtnall and Robertson brothers and, yes, even bad boys like Archie Henderson, Kim Clackson and Greg Tebbutt.
That kind of history was built over 23 seasons from 1971-72 to 1993-94 and doesn’t happen overnight.
Yet it’s the historical burden the Royals organization must bear as it works to leave its own mark on this community.
The Bruins/Royals franchise, heading into its eighth season, is one-third of the way to the Cougars 23-year run and nowhere near what the Cougars had already built by that point with the 1975 No. 1 NHL draft pick in Bridgman and the building blocks in place for their 1981 WHL championship team.
But don’t forget how depressingly awful the Cougars had become in their final years in Victoria, and how apathetic the fan base became in response, before Brodsky moved the club to Prince George.
This is a process and not every team replicates exact timetables or outcomes.
“It’s all about building a tradition. And we’re just beginning in Victoria,” said Hope.
“Twenty years from now, [I believe] you’ll see those championship banners hanging from the rafters here [in the Memorial Centre] and plaques around the building honouring our alumni in the NHL. We’re just getting started.”