Canucks notebook: Lots of decisions ahead for AHL Abbotsford
The financial implications for the Vancouver Canucks in moving their farm team close to home are varied.
It will mean most, if not all, road trips will have a commercial flight component, which is more expensive than travelling by bus, as is the norm in the American Hockey League, but this still won’t be as costly as flying the NHL team around on charters.
Recalling players from the minors to the NHL will mostly mean a short drive, not having to fly players halfway across the continent, sometimes with a connection and/or weather implications presenting problems.
And team operating costs will now be paid out in Canadian dollars, not U.S., though in Utica, most non-player costs were carried by Mohawk Valley Garden, the Robert Esche-led company that managed day-to-day operations over the past eight years.
According to a source, the deal between the team and the City of Abbotsford is just about done, with just a few small details to be finalized.
One interesting question to watch for will be whether the Canucks land an arena management contract as part of the deal, since the Abbotsford Centre did brisk business booking concerts and other arena-suitable events before the pandemic.
Abbotsford staffing
Tuesday’s announcement by the Canucks may not have indicated the deal was done, but all the background chatter around it suggests it soon will be.
And once the ink is dry — and the approval of the AHL’s board of governors lands, which is expected to be a formality on Thursday — then the Canucks will truly turn their heads toward what the new organization will look like.
The Canucks were already responsible for staffing the hockey operations side of the Comets, so presumably the bulk of that group will simply move to Abbotsford. The business side of things are more of an open question.
The Canucks are going to look at how other NHL teams that run their AHL teams in the same jurisdiction do things.
They won’t have to look far, since Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal all have their farm clubs in the same city or not far away. Most run the business side of the AHL clubs as part of the NHL team and there’s little reason to think, given how Canucks Sports and Entertainment have run their non-hockey teams, it will be any different with Abbotsford.
The eSports Titans and Surge and the lacrosse Warriors share a lot of business staff with the Canucks, with additional team operations staff being added as deemed necessary by ownership.
The full deal
With it looking more and more likely that the final games of the season against the Calgary Flames — the Canucks face their cross-Rockies rivals in three of their last four games later this month — are meaningless for playoff purposes, there have been questions about whether some of all of those games might simply disappear.
Asked about this premise, deputy commissioner Bill Daly told Postmedia in an email that there is little chance those games won’t be played.
“I don’t expect any to get scrubbed,” he said Wednesday.
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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