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Phil Esposito
Hockey in Florida?
(Originally published in The Sun-Times of Canada,
1992)
By Bob Andelman
Maybe the Tampa Bay Lightning has turned out better than any
of the jokes about how ridiculous it would be to play ice hockey
in Florida. But with a second NHL team on its way to the Sunshine
State as early as next season, can a new round of jokes be far
behind?
Consider: They're talking about naming the team "The
Humidity." As in, if you thought the Miami Heat was bad,
wait till you see the Humidity."
Phil Esposito isn't exactly thrilled to see a second Florida
hockey team hitting the boards by the 1993-94 season. It's a
little soon, says the president of the first-year Lightning,
much the same way new Miami franchise owner H. Wayne Huizenga
said last summer that it was a little soon for Tampa Bay to get
a baseball team to compete with his new National League team,
the Florida Marlins.
"Now that it's a done deal, I'm very excited," he
says. "But I didn't think it should come yet. It should
wait until '95, '96, give us a chance to sink our roots."
Esposito is especially concerned about the way Huizenga may
market his team. "There's no way the Miami franchise can
call itself 'Florida's team,'" he says. "They might
try to do that, but we've got to stop them. He can call it Miami,
Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood. I don't care. But I don't want it
called the 'South Florida Hurricanes.'"
The president of the Tampa Bay Lightning figures that without
him, Huizenga wouldn't even have a hockey team.
"They wouldn't have even come close to getting the franchise
(without us)," he says. "We were the guinea pigs. We're
doing a lot better than most expansion teams do in their first
year. We're way ahead."
Still, he believes, "It'll be a good, friendly rivalry."
As for the continuing wisecracks and snickering he hears out
of northern fans, Esposito doesn't understand what all the fuss
over hockey in Florida is all about.
"Once you get inside the building, it's the same to me,"
he says. "I don't know what's going on outside, whether
it's snowing, raining or 90 degrees. Inside, the fans are yelling;
I'm very impressed with their knowledge of the game, by how fast
they've started picking on the referees. It's no different than
Boston or New York."
Ric Green, director of sports development for the Broward
Economic Development Council in Fort Lauderdale, thinks hockey
will work in South Florida. "Personally, I don't know a
blue line from a hockey stick, but I'm looking forward to learning
about it. And South Florida is populated by so many people from
elsewhere that I think we might be surprised by how much sense
it makes," he says. "Hockey is a real nitty-gritty,
city sport. I think it could do real well."
During a sold-out December exhibition game between the Lightning
and the New York Rangers at the Miami Arena, 80 percent of the
crowd cheered for the Rangers. "If the Dolphins aren't on,
we don't get the (Tampa Bay) Bucs games, we get the Jets and
Giants."
Green expects hockey will make a smooth transition across
South Florida's multicultural lines. "All the Dolphins games
are carried in Spanish, as will be the Marlins games," he
says. "I'm going to be curious to see how this plays with
kids because they can't go out and play hockey here."
Not now. But soon. A popular ice rink in Homestead was destroyed
by Hurricane Andrew; with the coming of the NHL, it is expected
to be rebuilt. And a new Miami rink will open in January. Statewide,
rinks are open or scheduled to open in the Tampa Bay area, Orlando,
Sarasota and Jacksonville. Rich Wasilewski, owner of the SunBlades
Ice Arena in Clearwater, expects that Miami's NHL franchise will
cause a flurry of new rink construction in South Florida.
"The Lightning has had a significant impact on hockey
awareness in our area," Wasilewski says. The Lightning practices
at SunBlades once a week, he says, and visiting teams often come
to the arena as well. SunBlades is home to 16 leagues and the
University of South Florida hockey team. A competing rink opened
nearby a year ago but hasn't dented SunBlades' business.
* * *
In related Florida hockey news, Tampa Coliseum Inc. - which
has an exclusive contract to build a permanent arena for the
Lightning - has missed deadline after deadline to complete its
financing and begin construction. By the fall of 1992, TCI began
to make large penalty payments to an escrow fund, first of $250,000,
then $500,000, due every 30 days. Failure to make the payments
would wipe out TCI's deal with the Lightning.
"If they aren't going to build it, I sure as hell want
to know soon," Esposito says. "It's very difficult
to make plans."
Esposito says TCI's D-Day is March 7. "If they don't
have everything in place on that day, we terminate (the lease
agreement)," he says. Tampa developers would like to build
the Lightning a downtown arena, one of several options Esposito
is considering. Other possibilities include a $30-million upgrade
of the Expo Hall; a retrofit of the empty Florida Suncoast Dome
in St. Petersburg, converting it from a baseball-primary facility
to hockey; and a facility built by and for the Lightning itself.
The significance of TCI's failure to start the arena weighs
heavily on the Lightning's purse strings. Season ticket sales
were flat until the team actually began play at a temporary facility,
the Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall in Tampa. But even a
sellout accommodates just 10,000 fans, half of what a permanent
arena will handle.
"It's hurt quite a bit, to be honest," Esposito
says. "We still have a lot of people say, 'They're not going
to make it, they still don't have a building.' But we're not
dumb. We know we need a facility."
end
end
©2000,
All rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced without the
express written permission of the author.
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