A Short Stint In Steeltown

As the city of Hamilton looks to fill its renovated FirstOntario Centre, it should be noted this isn't the first time that the city has pursued an AHL franchise for its arena. FirstOntario Centre is the original Copps Coliseum that opened on November 30, 1985, and it's played home to a few different hockey franchises. One of the teams that called the city home was the Hamilton Canucks who spent one inaugural season and one rocky season in Steeltown from 1992 until 1994, but the Vancouver Canucks' AHL affilate would see brighter days once its run ended in southern Ontario. What's the story on the Hamilton Canucks? Let's find out!

On April 25, 1992, Hamilton Entertainment and Convention Facilities Inc. announced that they had come to a three-year agreement with Double Hitch Enterprises Ltd. to have Vancouver's AHL affiliate play in Hamilton's Copps Coliseum. Double Hitch Enterprises Ltd. was the partnership between former NHL player Pat Hickey, Canadian Football League legend Bernie Faloney, and Dieter Beer, a founder of Immunotec. The three investors looked to "generate $1 million in their inaugural American Hockey League season" according to The Canadian Press article below. Click to enlarge for reading.

I'll be the first to admit that there was certainly a lot of promise and enthusiasm in that article, but AHL hockey in the early-1990s simply wasn't as popular as it was today. And being that southern Ontario hockey fans likely couldn't give two hoots about the Vancouver Canucks' prospects, this seems like it might be a harder sell than what Double Hitch Enterprises imagined when it comes to generating that million-dollar goal. However, let's dig into this.

It was announced in June of 1992 that the AHL had placed the Hamilton Canucks in the confusingly-named Southern Division that featured the Canucks, the Baltimore Skipjacks, the Hershey Bears, the Binghamton Rangers, the Utica Devils, and the Rochester Americans. Given that the Utica Devils made the playoffs as the fourth-place team in that division with 34 wins and 74 points, the Canucks were joining a competitive division where they had to win games to win fans. Considering that the IHL's Milwaukee Admirals - Vancouver's 1991-92 affiliate - finished with 84 points and third in the East Division, there was hope they could bring that success and more to their AHL debut in Hamilton.

In September, the Hamilton Canucks got a little star power for their lineup with a guy that a lot of southern Ontario hockey fans knew well. 33 year-old sniper Rick Vaive signed on to play with the Canucks as a player-assistant coach after having a solid career that included stops in both Toronto and Buffalo. Vaive stated that he was "excited for the opportunity" which may have given him a path back to the NHL, but we'll find out more as this story plays out. Nonetheless, the Canucks had some NHL star power to bring in fans.

Head coach Jack McIlhargey got some more NHL help at the end of September when the Hamilton Canucks signed former NHL defenceman Mario Marois to a deal as a player-assistant coach as well. The 34 year-old defender has played for St. Louis and Winnipeg the season before, but he'd be suiting up in the AHL in 1992 for the first time since 1977-78 when he skated with the New Haven Nighthawks where he had eight goals, 23 assists, and 147 PIMs in 52 games. Marois didn't have any southern Ontario hockey experience, but 955 games of NHL experience was good enough for him to find a home in Hamilton. Would these signings lead to wins?

The Hamilton Canucks began to see their goaltending picture start to become clearer after the Vancouver Canucks acquired Kay Whitmore from the Hartford Whalers on October 2, 1992.

The end result was that Kirk McLean and Kay Whitmore played the season as the tandem in Vancouver with Troy Gamble making a few spot appearances. Bob Mason was the odd netminder out as he spent most of the 1992-93 season in Hamilton as the starter for the AHL Canucks. With the crease solidified, would the AHL Canucks compete?

Things didn't go so well on the ice for the Canucks as they struggled to score goals. Their 284 goals was fourth-lowest in the AHL in 1992-93, and it was significantly lower than any of the teams in their division. Fifth-place Hershey scored 32 more goals than Hamilton despite recording two less wins, but it's points that matter as the Canucks finished with 64 points - two back of Hershey and four back of fourth-place Baltimore. Their 64 points tied with the Springfield Indians for second-lowest in the AHL. Yes, they struggled.

The Canucks stumbled out of the gates as they recorded just their fifth win on Sunday, December 6 with a 5-2 victory over the Fredericton Canadiens. Clearly, that slow start to the season put the expansion AHL franchise into a bad spot, and they needed to win games if they hoped for a shot at the playoffs. Needless to say, they won a few more games, but the 29-45-6 Canucks would miss the playoffs by four points in their inaugural season.

AHL veteran Stephane Morin led the Canucks with 31 goals and 85 points, and he was significantly ahead of second-place Neil Eisenhut with 22 goals and 62 points. 21 year-old Jiri Slegr and 19 year-old Jassen Cullimore were the only players on the roster who spent any significant time with the Canucks at any point in their careers as Slegr had 18 points in 21 games while Cullimore has 12 points in 56 games. Slegr did spend 41 games with Vancouver that season, so he may have been the best young prospect the Canucks could boast.

Goaltending, however, was another story as Mason played 44 games, posting a 20-19-3 record on a 3.67 GAA and an .887 save percentage. All of Jason Fitzsimmons, Mike Fountain, and Troy Gamble played between 12 and 14 games, and not one of them had a goals-against average below 4.00. Combined, they were 8-26-3, and that's simply not good enough for any backup netminder, let alone three netminders who were 25 or younger and aiming for NHL jobs.

If there were positives, the Canucks averaged 4,773 fans per game - fourth-highest in the league - while Vaive scored 16 goals and 31 points in 38 games after recovering from a broken wrist that kept him out from the start of the season until late November. Mario Marois was slightly better as he had five goals and 32 points in 68 games, but the two veterans hardly made the significant impact that the Canucks had wanted. While both were good, they simply couldn't carry the Canucks to the playoffs in their first AHL season.

Whatever good that had been built in the first season of Canucks hockey in Hamilton quickly unravelled as the summer got underway. Bernie Faloney and Dieter Beer both left the ownership partnership, and were quickly replaced by Brad Sherman and Donald Starr on July 29, 1993. They added three more investors, but the group ran into money problems as the season neared. The biggest hurdle, they indicated, was the lease deal with Copps Coliseum, and this would prove to be a major problem moving forward.

On September 23, 1993, president and general manager Matt Newsome resigned from his position with the team. With no general manager, it's hard to imagine that the team would find its direction as the season was scheduled to get underway, but things continued to spiral downward when Pat Hickey was dismissed from the Double Hitch Enterprises group. With the team's future in serious question, news broke on November 3, 1993 that sent everything into turmoil.

On that day, the owners, operating as Double Hitch Enterprises, informed Copps Coliseum that they were no longer operating the AHL franchise and would be discussing the future of the franchise with both the Canucks and the AHL. Unwilling to operate the franchise without going into debt, the ownership group effectively stopped funding the team at that point. This was clearly an issue with the team already a month into its season, so the AHL and these owners needed to find a solution quickly.

By the third week of November, the AHL had found its solution: the Vancouver Canucks would operate the franchise for the remainder of the season, and the ownership held by Double Hitch Enterprises would be terminated. With the team's future for the remainder of the season back on stable ground, the Hamilton Canucks could focus on playing hockey rather than worrying about whether or not they'd be allowed in the arena. The Vancouver Canucks would be able to control the operations on and off the ice of their affiliate, so there appeared to be some benefit in having the NHL team run the AHL team. Would it help in the standings?

Things had improved dramatically for the Canucks in terms of on-ice play. Stephane Morin still led the team in scoring with 38 goals and 105 points, but he had a number of goal-scoring threats near him in the points race. Jay Mazur scored a team-high 40 goals to go with his 95 points, and Dan Kesa scored 37 goals and 70 points in just 53 games for the AHL Canucks. Scott Walker announced his arrival with a 272 penalty-minute season while scoring 39 points, and Mike Fountain turned his game around in the crease, going 34-28-6 with a 3.61 GAA and an .886 save percentage. While there weren't any standout rookies for the Vancouver Canucks to insert into the lineup, the youthful Hamilton Canucks were finding the right chemistry.

The 1993-94 Hamilton Canucks would rise in the standings, finishing in second-place in the AHL Southern Division with a 36-37-7 and 79 points. That would qualify them for the playoffs where they ran into the Cornwall Aces who had finished just two points back of the Canucks. Despite the success they had shown in the regular season, the playoffs were a different story as Cornwall swept the Canucks in seven days, ending a solid season of hockey in Hamilton.

Things got immediately worse after that playoff series ended as one day after the Canucks were swept, the Vancouver Canucks announced that the Hamilton Canucks would be leaving the city. Vancouver general manager Pat Quinn stated that ticket sales seemed to be the reason for the club's relocation, and there may be some truth to that as the Canucks went from the fourth-highest average attendance in 1992-93 to fourth-lowest in 1993-94. Again, the uncertainty that swirled about the franchise likely didn't help any ticket sales, but the Canucks weren't going to see if things returned to normal. The only thing left to determine was where the franchise would play next season.

That answer would come quickly as the Canucks sold the franchise to a group led by Alan Taylor and Howard Dolgon on May 6, 1994 who promptly moved the team to Syracuse, New York. The new team would be named the Syracuse Crunch, and that team has had a fantastic run as an AHL franchise since arriving in that city. It should be noted that the Crunch would remain as the AHL affiliate for the Canucks until 2000 when the Canucks began looking for a closer city to house their prospects, but that affiliation never saw much postseason success either. In the six seasons following the move, the Crunch made the playoffs three times and were eliminated in the first round in each of those appearances.

For two seasons, the city of Hamilton had AHL hockey in the early 1990s after the Vancouver Canucks expanded into Steeltown, but those two seasons were filled with ups and downs, both on and off the ice, as the costs of running a professional hockey team eventually ended the Canucks' run in Hamilton. This should be a reminder to any owners of an AHL franchise looking to relocate to Hamilton's newly-renovated arena as the population and market seems poised for a franchise, but the costs of running a team and the effort to sell the team to the market might be higher than expected.

There wasn't a lot to write home about when it came to Vancouver's presence in Hamilton, but the AHL Canucks had an interesting and tumultuous two-year history in southern Ontario!