Columnist Dean Juipe: All’s quiet as Thunder lies in state

Dean Juipe

Monday, April 12, 1999 | 10:30 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

With the fitting backdrop of a cloudless and almost dreary sky, those looking to pay their last respects to the Las Vegas Thunder hockey franchise quietly scheduled a visit to the Thomas & Mack Center Sunday night.

Anyone who missed the viewing session can see the corpse again either Tuesday, Friday or Saturday as the Thunder closes out the 1998-99 season and almost assuredly shuts down its operation for the foreseeable future, if not for good.

Friends of the family who make the trek will all but hear "The Green, Green Grass of Home" playing softly or perhaps subliminally as they reflect on the team's passing. But friends, let alone sentimentalists, have been in short supply for the Thunder for quite some time.

Perhaps 1,000 were on hand as the team took a 3-2 shootout victory over the Long Beach Ice Dogs, leaving the 35-37-6 Thunder with an outside chance of avoiding a losing record in its sixth and final season of existence.

Unlike comedian W.C. Fields' proclamation that "reports of my death are premature," there is no question the Thunder has received its last rites. John Bruce sang the national anthem before the game with Long Beach but that honor may as well have gone to Count Cool Rider.

In recent weeks the patient's prognosis has gone from bleak to grave to turn out the lights. At last, the Thunder's black (and once-chic teal) jerseys are apropos.

With a dirge of some sort equally appropriate, team management -- unwittingly no doubt -- offered up the Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac composition "Oh Well" before the opening face-off. Accidental or not, the choice was surprisingly fitting even if few in the audience picked up on the subtlety of the song's title.

"Oh Well" also stood in contrast to the insidious blast of sound the team routinely subjects its few fans to during the game. At every pause in the action, at every interval, there is some sort of volcanic assault on the patrons.

But loud music isn't what led to this franchise going six feet under, even though it succeeded in further alienating hockey fans who would have been content to come to a game and actually watch hockey without leaving in need of a hearing aid.

A better explanation for the team's passing is that it failed to continue winning and it failed to keep a core of familiar players from year to year. While it once had a nucleus of identifiable players, the last couple of years the Thunder locker room has taken on the appearance -- and had just as much shuffling about -- as a bus terminal.

That lack of continuity, combined with the front office preferring to take the "goon" approach to the sport and load up on fighters instead of scorers, led to diminishing attendance counts and considerable ill will. Even with one foot in Palm's finely manicured boneyard this season, the only statistical category in the IHL that has Las Vegas in first place is the least desirable one: penalty minutes.

This being a city that doesn't care much for fighters who lose, the Thunder's act grew stale. It will soon be formally counted out and laid to rest.

Yes, the days have dwindled to a precious few -- although you can still pay full price ($125) for a Thunder jersey in the T&M's Rebel Store. No close-out sale there.

Maybe someone with a morbid fascination will still grab 'em up.

If not, Oh Well.