The Vig

I’ll admit I was a little taken aback by the Winterhawks season ticket announcement last week.  A raise in prices, especially “in this economy”, is kind of a shock to the system.  But after a few seconds, I got kind of excited.

Look, the Winter Hawks Winterhawks have been run like a family business for far too long.  They’ve lost money nearly every season since they won the Memorial Cup in 1998 and have done little to correct the problem.  Oh sure, a few playoff runs helped with the bottom line, but even that just slowed the hemmorage.  It never stopped it.  When the sale to the J³ group went through in 2005, there were whispers that had they not come in, the Hawks might well have folded.  And there’s no doubt in my mind that had Gallacher not come in last season, the Hawks wouldn’t have finished the season.  Or at the very least, they would have been taken over by the league just as the NHL had taken over the Phoenix Coyotes.  It couldn’t continue.

The new guys took their time last season figuring out exactly what it was they’d purchased.  They let some folks go and kept others around.  They did some nice things for the players like getting the XBox and plasma TV, doing away with cheap buffet dinners on the road.  That sort of thing.  And they brought in a new strength and conditioning coach.

Sidebar:  I’ve had a media pass for the last couple of years.  I hope they extend the priveledge to me again this season.  We shall see how that goes.  Anyway, I mention this because last season there were a couple of times I walked into either the Rose Garden or the Coliseum and I would find the entire team engaged in flexibility drills led by Rich Campbell.  I never saw this under Innes.  Maybe it was done, but I never saw it.  Particularly close to gametime.  Some folks have hailed Innes’ move to Tri-Cities.  Along with everyone else, I wish him the best.  But as was pointed out in the O-Live forum, there may have been a reason the Hawks were losing so many man games to injury.  We shall see.  End Sidebar.

Upgrading the franchise isn’t going to come cheap.  Not when you have big money in other cities doing big things.  You need to create an atmosphere that high school kids want to be a part of, and you need to do the same for the paying public.  And lets face it, under J³, no one wanted to be a part of it.  Kids had to have been turned off by what they were seeing in the front office.  And the public showed how little they cared by not showing up.  And when the public did show up, the regulars could hardly hide their distaste.  That’s some way to grow the fan base, huh?

So the franchise is doing what it has to do.  It’s raising prices so they can at least break even.  It’s giving the most vocal complainers, the season ticket holders, their own special sections so they won’t have to be bothered by thundersticks or kids running around when they shouldn’t.  They get to have their little hockey library with extra ushers to enforce the rules.  How very nice for them.  I wonder how many will take invitation and how many will tell the Hawks they prefer their old seats.  Hey, the Hawks tried to compromise.  If you don’t take the offer, don’t complain.

Back toward the end of the Patterson era, the Blazers made kind of a big deal about signing Joel Przybilla.  The team dragged the media down to the Portland waterfront and made them eat bad buffet food and watch Przy jet around the Willamette on a jet boat.  The media had a field day with that, calling it a desperate stunt by a desperate organization.  To me though it sounded exactly the right note.  It said the Blazers were done running around in secret.  they were done staring at their shoes as they tried to overcome the Jail Blazer era.  They were going to start taing some PR swings and they were going to change their culture.  It started with that dumb media stunt that the media didnt recognie at the time.  Now looking back, it’s generally acknowledged that’s when the Blazers fortunes started turning around.  That was the same draft when they passed on Adam Morrison and took Aldridge and Roy.  It all paid off pretty quickly.

These same moves are going to start paying off for Gallacher.  This team isn’t that far away from the playoffs and may be a year further from making some serious noise withing the league.  Add a little recruiting magic, and suddenly people are going to want to be a part of this.  Big time.  Yes, its up to the front office to perform.  I have every confidence they will.  It will be up to the fans to hold up their end of the bargain.  These aren’t going to be your fathers Winterhawks.  Those days are over.  The choice now is whether you want to be a part of this or whether you’re going to find something better to do.  I know which way I’m going.

Post Script:  Oh…I couldn’t figure out how to work in Dylan B.  So here you go.  As usual, he speaks truth.

Way back either just before or just after I began the O-Live blog, Scooter went on a rant on the O-Live forum about how it chapped his hide whenever someone spelled Winter Hawks as one word.  It was two words, he said, with a space and two capital letters.  That lesson immediately stuck with me and I resolved to no matter what always make sure I spelled the name correctly.  It was done out of respect for the little guy, who I loved dearly.  Still do.

It came as a mild shock then on Friday when the Winter Hawks Winterhawks sent out a press release announcing they would henceforth be known as the Winterhawks rather than the Winter Hawks.  I was standing in Northeast Portland when the message came across my Blackberry, but I could still hear Scooter’s head explode in Beaverton.  What the hell happened?  Did someone screw up a legal document?  New letterhead?  A new logo?  The mind reeled a bit as I thought about Scooter and that lesson from many moons ago.  Why the change?

It took me through the weekend to sort it out.  I finally figured out I didn’t care.  Yeah, you could always tell the fans from the outsiders by how they spelled the name.  But that’s such an elitist attitude.  One which shone through on a couple of entries on the O-Live blog.  It really doesn’t matter.  Ultimately it’s Gallacher’s team, he can do with it as he wishes.  Want to call it the Winterhawks?  Have at it.  Rosebuds?  More power to him.  Totems?  Why not?

There are so many bigger fish to fry with the organization both on and off the ice, it hardly seems worth mentioning.  If folks want to get stuck on tradition and sentiment, let them.  They’ll still buy tickets and still come to games no matter what.  They’re not going anywhere.  Gallacher and Piper both know this.  As for me, it’s onward toward the future.  I can’t wait to see whats next.

Update:  Dylan B. ponders the Vancouver Winterhawks.  Oh good.