Winnipeg Ice move to Wenatchee

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This article was published 17/06/2023 (1024 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Wheat Kings are once again the Western Hockey League’s standard bearer in Manitoba after news broke Friday that the Winnipeg Ice are on the move again.

The Ice, which relocated from Cranbrook, B.C., prior to the 2019-20 season, will be moving to Wenatchee, Wash., where they will join the U.S. Division and be owned by David and Lisa White of the California-based Shoot the Puck Foundation.

The move was the worst-kept secret in the WHL, with rumours starting to pop up last season the Ice wouldn’t be returning to Winnipeg after promises to build a new rink that conformed to WHL standards never materialized.

That was a condition of the franchise’s move to Manitoba in 2019.

“There have been so many rumours circulating the last number of months, so I wasn’t surprised,” said Wheat Kings head coach and general manager Marty Murray, who joined Brandon’s staff last summer. “You heard more about the B.C. market but I heard rumblings some time ago about some U.S. markets. It was nice to have Winnipeg here. I was only involved for one season but just with travel and things like that, it made things a lot easier for teams coming this way.”

The move allows the league to rebalance its Western and Eastern Conferences with 11 clubs on each side starting next season.

Wheat Kings owner Jared Jacobson sits on the board of governors, so he had some insight into what’s been going on all along.

“It’s been a contentious issue with the arena building in Winnipeg and trying to find a place to play,” Jacobson said. “It’s been going on for a few years. It’s sad because we had quite the rivalry going since before the hub. They started getting stronger and stronger and they had their run at it this year and we were becoming pretty good rivals.

“They were our closest WHL partner. Having another team in Manitoba was nice in that market but it obviously it didn’t work for them.”

Jacobson noted the games between the two teams were good for both markets.

“Winnipeg and Brandon, even in minor hockey and all the way up, it’s always a battle because those are your rivals,” Jacobson said.

He added both teams always tried to have Manitoba players on their rosters, which helped at the box office, adding he hopes Ice fans will gravitate back to cheering for the Wheat Kings.

Wheat Kings overage forward Dawson Pasternak would also like to see that happen.

“I sure hope so,” Pasternak said. “That would be nice. I don’t think they’ll still be cheering for Wenatchee now so I’m sure it will bring a few Winnipeg people back to Brandon.”

Winnipeg had significant prior history in the WHL, with one team playing from 1967 to 1977 under the names Jets, Clubs and Monarchs, and the expansion Warriors skated there from 1980 to 1984. (The Jets-Clubs-Monarchs later became the Calgary Wranglers and have been the Lethbridge Hurricanes since 1987, and the Warriors moved to Moose Jaw in 1984.)

The third move of a team from Winnipeg didn’t always seem inevitable.

After announcing the move from Cranbrook in January 2019, the Ice unveiled plans in May 2019 for a 4,500-seat facility located along McGillivray Boulevard near the hockey training centre, The Rink. There was never a shovel put in the ground — the Winnipeg Free Press reported in October 2021 those plans were on hold — with the team playing instead in the dated 1,600-seat, Wayne Fleming Arena at the University of Manitoba.

Ice majority owner Greg Fettes, who owned the team with former Wheat Kings goaltending coach Matt Cockell, declined to speak with Winnipeg media. Instead, he put out a statement on Friday on the Ice’s Twitter account.

“Despite our success in building the organization, we were unable to confirm our ability to build a new facility in Winnipeg that met the WHL standards on a timeline that was acceptable to the WHL,” the statement read in part. “Unfortunately, we were just never able to get the project on solid footing due to the changing landscape (during and post pandemic). Simply put, we ran out of time.”

“… This one cuts deep,” the Fettes statement added. “Our failure to get a new facility built that would solidify the future of the WHL in Winnipeg is incredibly heart breaking.”

The WHL has been a remarkably stable league in the last two decades except for the new Wenatchee club, which played as the Edmonton Ice from 1996 to 1988, the Kootenay Ice from 1998 to 2019 and the Winnipeg Ice from 2019 to 2023.

After a tumultuous period of change across the league in the 1980s and the 1990s, the only other WHL club to move from one market to another in the 2000s is the Victoria Royals, which began play in 2011 after starting up as the expansion Chilliwack Bruins in 2006.

(The WHL also welcomed three other expansion clubs in the 2000s, the Vancouver Giants in 2001, the Everett Silvertips in 2003 and the Edmonton Oil Kings in 2007.)

The news wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who was plugged in. Rumours at one point last winter suggested Winnipeg was moving to Chilliwack, B.C., but that never materialized.

Ice forward Conor Geekie of Strathclair said the Ice players heard the innuendo last season too, just like everyone else. But as they battled their way to the WHL final, they chose to disregard the outside distractions.

“It’s one of those things you never really listen into,” Geekie said. “There are rumours all over the world and this year it just happened to be us. I think it was very unexpected for us with how we were playing as a team and how far we got.”

All of that changed on Friday morning. After a workout, Geekie checked Instagram on his phone and learned about the move to Wenatchee. It was a similar situation for his teammates.

“The most frustrating thing is how we found out,” he said. “There wasn’t much notice. We all found at the same time. I’m sure they were swamped but I think we just expected a little bit more in that category.”

It was an unfortunate final chapter in what Geekie called a “great honour” to play in Manitoba’s capital city, especially with billets and fans.

“I can’t say enough about Winnipeg,” he said. “Being a Manitoba boy, that was a second home than Brandon. It was really fun, and a lot of good times that our team had. The city really treated us with a ton of respect.”

By coincidence, the sale was announced in the week the league was working on its scheduling. Winnipeg was Brandon’s opponent in a season-opening, home-and-home series the last three years — excluding the pandemic-induced Regina hub season in 2020-21 — and also accounted for 10 of Brandon’s 68 games.

“We got through a good portion but there are a lot of challenges,” Murray said of the team’s schedule. “I think everybody did a good job. It’s not 100 per cent complete yet but we’re getting there.”

He said the scheduling meeting was cordial, noting teams didn’t just do what was best for them but for each other as well.

There’s no word yet if Winnipeg’s departure will signal a return to the East Division for the Swift Current Broncos, who moved into the Central Division with the five Alberta clubs when Winnipeg joined the league. They traditionally played in the East Division in the past.

Unfortunately for Brandon, Winnipeg was one of the top teams in the entire Canadian Hockey League the last two seasons, winning 18 of the 20 regular season games between the clubs. But that dominance came at a heavy price.

In May’s draft, the Ice had just one pick in the top four rounds, and incredibly, they have just one draft pick combined in the top six rounds in 2024, 2025 and 2026.

That signals some potentially tough years may lie ahead for the franchise, even if they make significant trades of top players who are eligible to return, including Geekie, Matthew Savoie, Zachary Benson and Daniel Hauser.

The Wheat Kings went 0-6-3-1 against Winnipeg last season, and 2-7-1-0 in 2021-22. In the Regina hub, Brandon swept all four games, with the teams going 4-4-0-0 against each other in the pandemic shortened 2019-20 season as the Ice made their Manitoba debut.

“The last couple of years have been pretty difficult,” Murray said of the series between the teams. “Obviously Winnipeg has been a top team in the CHL and this year made a real push to win the whole thing. We talked about that, maybe having payback at some time because we took our lumps from this year for sure but that obviously won’t happen. It will be one game per year moving forward.

“It is what it is. That’s life. You would have maybe liked a chance to get them back a little bit but that’s out of our control.”

Pasternak is the only Winnipegger on Brandon’s roster. The former member of the Portland Winterhawks had mixed feelings about the news.

“It sucks a little,” Pasternak said, noting his family has travelled to Brandon to see him on the ice because it’s a lot closer than Portland. “Obviously playing in Winnipeg is nice. The reason it doesn’t suck is because we don’t have to play Winnipeg so many times now. Obviously that’s a big plus for me and the team.”

The Wild, who play in the 4,300-seat Town Toyota Center, have roots at the Junior A level as they join their third league. They debuted in the North American Hockey League in the 2008-09 season, and moved to the British Columbia Hockey League in 2015-16.

Wenatchee won the BCHL championship in 2018 under general manager Bliss Littler and have suffered just one season under .500 in team history. As a Junior A club, they had eight National Hockey League draft picks.

Murray actually coached in Wenatchee, a community of 35,000, with his Minot Minotauros in the NAHL.

“It’s a smaller town,” Murray said. “It’s on (the Columbia River) and it’s nice. Geographically, I think it will be good for the travel in that U.S. Division. The rink itself is a pretty nice rink. It seats around 4,000 or so and is a really good junior rink.

“It was probably close to 10 years ago when we made our one and only trip out there. It was supported well by the community back then, and it’s obviously improved in the last few years.”

Wenatchee is located in central Washington state — straight south of Kamloops — and will have a tidy travel itinerary. Its trips within the division are reasonably short, starting with Everett (198 km), Kennewick (211 km), Seattle (238 km), Spokane (273 km) and Portland (469 km).

It’s 1,861 km from Brandon.

At least the Geekie family has some roots in the U.S. Division too. Conor’s older brother Morgan played with the Tri-City Americans, and his father Craig suited up for the Spokane Chiefs in his overage season after a trade from the Wheat Kings.

But all that lies in the future for the Arizona Coyotes first-round pick, who will be entering his 19-year-old season, and will have a new experience ahead of him regardless of where he plays.

“I guess that’s the way you have to look at it,” Geekie said. “I’m not going to dig too deep into how everything pans out. I’m not really sure what the future holds for me or my teammates. I think it’s just one of those things where it’s sad to see Winnipeg go.”

ICINGS: The ownership group that sold the Ice also owns the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Blues and Freeze in Winnipeg. There is no change in their status so far.

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