Wranglers Fans Asked to Wear White. Wranglers Fans Asked to Bring Mac-N-Cheese.
Wranglers Fans Asked to Ignore Damaging Rumors About Team’s Future.
The first two were actual headlines on press releases leading up to the Wranglers’ ECHL playoff series against the Alaska Aces resuming at the Orleans Arena this week.
The third also might have been an actual headline, if the Wranglers issued press releases to negate the effects of damaging rumors.
Here is a sampling of what those who blog and chat on the Internet and leave messages on my voice mail have been saying while waiting for Anchorage to freeze over and for Miss California to become a free agent:
• The Wranglers will soon fold.
• The ECHL will soon fold.
• The Wranglers will be sold to a group of the team’s fans and/or retired Charlestown Chiefs defenseman Dave “Killer” Carlson, who will then move the club to some Southern state where there’s a senior citizens community in the market for a hockey team.
• The Wranglers have signed Ogie Ogilthorpe, Clarence “Screaming Buffalo” Swamptown and Andre “Poodle” Lussier, and their line will start tonight’s Game 4 as the Wranglers attempt to stave off elimination against the Aces.
Of these rumors, I like the last one best. Alas, I’m afraid it’s not true. You can’t believe everything you read, even if Dickie Dunn wrote it.
As for the other three, they’re apparently not true, either. But they are hurting advance ticket sales. And season ticket renewals for next year, according to Wranglers President Billy Johnson.
Unlike the Charlestown franchise in the movies, I do know, to paraphrase Chiefs goalie Denis Lemieux, “who hones da’ Wranglers.” Charles Davenport hones — I mean owns — the Wranglers. This is what he told me Tuesday when I asked if the team would be coming back to the Orleans Arena for a seventh season, which is a long time for minor league franchises in these parts.
“One hundred percent absolutely yes without a doubt.”
So you can renew your season tickets now, Wranglers fans. There’s no risk involved. The economy will come around, as will the team’s power play.
Here’s the story as I know it: A disgruntled former employee of the Wranglers is telling anybody who was raised in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, that the team is destined to plummet to a watery grave. Of course, if the team is sold and this person is put in charge, the Wranglers will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix RoadRunners, who have done that a couple of times.
(For now, they are back in ashes. Phoenix is one of five franchises that started this season that won’t be back, joining those in Fresno, Calif.; Augusta, Ga.; Biloxi, Miss.; and Dayton, Ohio.)
There’s been a lot of turnover in the ECHL since the league featured an all-time high of 31 teams during the 2003-04 season. By subtracting five and adding a team in Toledo, the ECHL, which stands for nothing — its words, not mine — will operate with 19 teams next year, at least as near as anybody can tell.
The ECHL’s instability is probably more responsible than the economy and a former employee’s voodoo doll for the negative vibe about the Wranglers’ future — even Davenport admits owners were too gung-ho about receiving those expansion checks from the new guys.
Though I will never forgive ECHL owners for letting the Macon Whoopee capitulate, Davenport said the league would be better off had it made the new guys do some diligence before being allowed to drop the puck or the price of a mezzanine seat. Like Davenport did when he bought the Wranglers in 1998 — the team didn’t start taking foolish roughing penalties until 2003.
But even savvy businessmen can get caught with too many men on the ice — or nor not enough fans in the mezzanine. Davenport was the one who sold the team in Fresno that joined the ECHL’s Mothball Division in December.
As for a March report stating he would be agreeable to selling the Wranglers to the right buyer, Davenport said that always has been the case.
“That’s been true since Day One. I’m a businessman,” he said.
But Davenport said even if he sold the Wranglers to a bunch of geezers from the Northeast, to put it the way Paul Newman did in “Slapshot,” there are “plenty of legal mechanisms in place” that would keep a team in Las Vegas.
“The economy may actually be a blessing to us in weeding out the teams that shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” Davenport said.
I’d be stunned if the Wranglers become one of those sooner, if not later. Although attendance was down from an average of 4,970 last year to 4,621 in 2008-09, that’s still higher than the ECHL average of 4,258. Plus, two years remain on their lease at the Orleans.
So I’m 100-percent-absolutely-yes-without-a-doubt-sure the team will be back for the 2009-10 season.
Especially if Ogilthorpe’s line starts tonight.
IF YOU GO
What: Wranglers vs. Alaska Aces
When: 7:30 tonight
Where: Orleans Arena
Tickets: $15-$40.50; orleansarena.com
ONLINE
Find updated coverage of the Wranglers, including game photos and blogs, at lasvegassun.com/wranglers. Read Ron Kantowski’s blog, “Now and Then,” at
lasvegassun.com/blogs/now-and-then.
Ron Kantowski can be reached
at 259-4088 or at ron@lasvegas
sun.com.
Copyright 2009  Las Vegas Sun
