Can Bedard-mania save the Prince George Cougars?
Can Bedard-mania save the Prince George Cougars?
The prospect of seeing a rising hockey star sells out the CN Centre for the first time in five years — but will it convert new fans to support the long-struggling franchise?
Welcome to Wednesday. Yesterday we hit 130 subscribers which is pretty surprising to me to be honest! I may have to plan something special for 200. I don’t know what. But something.
Today’s newsletter is about hockey but you don’t have to be a hockey fan to care. Here we go:
The cold weather is expected to stick around for at least a week but it won’t likely break any cold-weather records.
For the second time in six months, 7-Eleven is closing one of its downtown Prince George stores. 7-Eleven didn’t say why, but customers and staff blamed crime.
The Prince George teacher’s union is trying to get a meeting with the province due to the high number of staffing shortages they are facing.
A Q&A with the executive director of UNDU (The United Northern Drug Users group).
The Prince George Global Logistics Park, found between Highways 16 and 97 toward the airport (map) is looking to expand. Councillors are pretty optimistic about this plan.
We all need to click on this to make it the number one result.
Mayor says to give David Eby ‘a month or two’ to tackle homelessness, social issues
At Monday’s council meeting, Coun. Kyle Sampson raised concerns about the city shifting money around to continue to fund outreach workers to work with the homeless population. His concern isn’t having the positions but that the city is once again picking up the tab for something that should be a provincial program. The issue of the provincial and federal governments downloading costs onto local ones is ongoing across the country and Sampson wants to meet with provincial officials about it. Meanwhile, new mayor Simon Yu says he recently met with new premier David Eby and feels optimistic he will do more to tackle the social issues facing Prince George and others: “‘I think we need to give him a month or two,” and then follow-up, Yu said.’”
Will we ever be a Cougars town again?
The prospect of seeing a rising star might finally get bums in seats again
I was in elementary school when the Victoria Cougars relocated north to Prince George for the 1994-95 season. It was a big deal: the team is one step below the NHL and it was a chance for people to see future stars before they headed into the big leagues. And they were a huge success — it only took one year for the team to make the playoffs in 1996-97.
The result was something I still remember: Absolute Cougars-mania. I distinctly remember news reports of long lines to buy tickets to sold-out games and the team and its fans were even featured in a Mastercard commercial in 2000.
But sometime soon after that, the team fell out of favour. There were a few reasons. One, they stopped performing — the last time they made it beyond the first round of playoffs was 2007 and they haven’t been actual contenders to win the league since then.
There’s also been animosity towards changes to pricing structure and ownership — if you want hear a very young version of me stutter my way though an interview about this, you can find it here — and even the sale of the team to a new ownership group that includes Cougars alumni/NHL stars Dan Hamhuis and Eric Brewer in 2014 didn’t help much.
Plus, other teams and leagues have had more shine. The Prince George Spruce Kings may not play at a high a level as the Cougars, but they’ve had winning streaks and in the years since the Cougars hosted their first face off in Prince George, university-level basketball and soccer teams have arrived and now there’s Friday night football to contend with, as well.
With all of that at play, people just haven’t been turning out. As the Citizen reported in April of this year, “Only 1,727 fans showed up for Wednesday’s playoff game in a building that seat nearly 6,000.” In a league that needs to average about 3,000 fans to make money, there’s a real question about whether the Cougars can last here. It’s so dire that even people from Kelowna are writing about how Prince George needs to support its team or lose it.
Enter Connor Bedard.
Bedard does not play for the Cougars. He plays for the Regina Pats. At just 17-years-old, he is being touted as the next big thing in hockey. It is pretty much universally agreed he will be the No. 1 NHL draft pick next year, and he’s already subject to profiles in the New York Times and the Hockey News. He’s also currently on his first run through B.C. as a WHL player, boosting attendance at games from Vancouver to Kelowna. On Friday he’s playing in Prince George and the game is already sold out — the first sellout the Cougars have had since they made the playoffs in 2017. And unlike that run, when seats were left empty, fans are actually going to show up for this one.
The Cougars know this and are heavily promoting it:
Here’s the thing: A one-time boost to see a future NHL star won’t do much. But — a one-time boost that lets the Cougars demonstrate that they are a better team on and off the ice than what people remember or have heard for years — that’s something that can convert people. And the timing is good: The Cougars are currently the best team in B.C. and 4th in the western conference and 10th in the WHL overall. They are expected to have one of their deepest playoff runs in years.
The fans will be watching Friday night. The question is whether they like what they see enough to come back.