The Seattle T-birds are headed south.
The Kent City Council gave the final signoff on the proposed Kent Events Center on Thursday, approving the project by a vote of 6-1. The T-birds will be the building’s primary tennant once construction concludes, expected to be in December of 2008.
This is great news for the T-birds, if only because it means they’re escaping KeyArena. KeyArena is so inappropriate for the T-birds’ needs. First of all it’s way too big for the fanbase (the average attendance is about a quarter of capacity), making games feel like they’re being played in a cavern. The arena is also poorly configured for hockey and poorly lit. The KEC is also patterned on the Everett Events Center, with two ice sheets and dedicated facilities for the T-birds, meaning no more ridiculous drives to haul gear all the way from Kirkland (where the T-birds offices and practice rink are located) to Seattle for home games.
As for improving their situation, the T-birds are hoping to follow the Silvertips model: Be the primary tennant in a nice new building in a Seattle suburb trying to forge its own identity, and the fans will inevitably follow. To facilitate that the T-birds are trying to build a team that will peak in the 2008-09 season, with a wealth of promising 1989-born players who will be 19-year-olds that season.
However, following that model isn’t a guarantee of overwhelming success.
One issue is media coverage. The Tips were fortunate to be located in a market with its own sports radio station right in town, making radio a snap. They also got lucky in that the Herald had an employee who happened to be an avid WHL fan and agitated constantly for heavy coverage of the Tips, playing no small part in the eventual hiring of a certain reporter to cover the team full time, rather than a by-committee coverage situation where the team got space when available. I don’t know what the radio situation is in Kent, but the demise of the King County Journal means there’s no daily newspaper dedicated to the region. Therefore the T-birds are probably stuck with the bottom-of-the-totem-pole status in the Seattle newspapers, and may even have their coverage reduced.
Then you have to remember that the Tips caught lightning in a bottle that inaugural season in 2003-04. The Tips weren’t always destined to be a local sensation, in fact there were some precarious moments – I can remember some sparse crowds for weeknight games early that first season. But the unlikely drive to U.S. Division and Western Conference championships as an expansion team captured the community’s imagination to an extent no one could have predicted. The T-birds have the advantage of not going into Kent with an expansion roster. But will the T-birds be able to endear themselves to the Kent community the way the Tips did in Everett?
Nevertheless, I wish the T-birds all the luck in the world. I’ve had positive experiences in my dealing with the organization, and I hope they’re able to find the type of success, both on and off the ice, they’ve struggled to attain while in Seattle. A healthier Seattle franchise will only strengthen both the U.S. Division and WHL as a whole, making for better and more-exciting hockey. So good luck with the Kent endeavor – even if it means some brutal drives through rush hour traffic to cover Tips away games there.
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