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Sudbury Wolves get apology for fogged-out home opener, but no promise of new arena yet
It's like there is a municipal election next year. When the Ontario Hockey League wrote to the city of Sudbury after the Sudbury Wolves' home opener was postponed after just 81 seconds due to humidity and fog inside their arena, the knee-jerk riff was "it took this long for the league to be concerned?"
On principle, there are more important concerns for most small cities than spending bajillions — sorry, that's a word now — on a sports and entertainment facility. Yet those venues eventually get built. In the case of Sudbury and the Wolves, the 62-year-old Sudbury Community Arena will soon become the oldest arena in the OHL and that age is starting to show. Nevertheless, with just more than one year before provincewide municipal elections, the city council on Wednesday shot down a motion to even consider making an arena project a priority before their end of its term.
[City councillor Ron] Dupuis was in the crowd last month when the team's first home game was cancelled because of fog, and felt badly for people who had come from as far away as Dryden to see the game.
“I can imagine how frustrated they were,” he said. “My apologies to them.”
But getting funding in place so quickly at a time when the federal and provincial governments are broke is unrealistic and will increase the cost to taxpayers, he said. And hopes of making money once it's built are remote.
“We have a venue that has long outlived its usefulness," Dupuis said. “We need a new arena ... But we have to make sure we are upfront with the people, and we have to make sure we do our due diligence." (Northern Life)
There is a grandstanding element here. The city is already exploring what it would take to build a new OHL arena and maintain the smaller rinks throughout the northern Ontario city. All that really happened on Tuesday was that the buck got passed to the next council.
Chances are, the sports syndrome will kick in and build a new arena that will house the Wolves. Politicians might worry about the optics of spending money that would primarily benefit a sports team, but probably worry more about being perceived as responsible for not keeping a team in the city. The fact nearby North Bay was without the OHL for 11 years is probably a pertinent convenience sample.
There will be a roughly three-year lag in between the council vote and the time the Niagara IceDogs move in St. Catharines, Ont.'s new Meridian Centre in 2014. In Kingston, the Rogers K-Rock Centre project was approved in 2006 and the Frontenacs moved in two seasons later. Sudbury's wait is probably going to end up being longer.
The downside is this will affect not only the Wolves but the entire OHL. That abandoned home opener vs. the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds was rescheduled to Dec. 15, when the Soo's best defenceman, Darnell Nurse, could be with the national junior team. Events like that can affect the final standings.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca.