Investors trying to bring women’s hockey to town

Nick Christensen

Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004 | 9:56 a.m.

A group of unnamed investors is in discussions to purchase a women's professional hockey team and move it to Las Vegas, the team's president confirmed Tuesday.

The Vancouver Griffins, a four-year member of the National Women's Hockey League, have been actively pursuing new ownership for more than a year, Griffins president Philip DeGrandpre said. A deal last year to move the team to New York last year fell through.

"I was contacted a couple of weeks ago," said DeGrandpre, who would not reveal the identity of any potential investors. "I'm contacted once a week depending on if they have information or questions, like contacting some people in Las Vegas to look into the availability of a venue."

DeGrandpre expects the franchise to sell for about $300,000 Canadian, or a little less than $225,000 in U.S. dollars. He speculated that the team's annual operating cost in the United States would be between $200,000 and $250,000.

The only existing hockey rinks in Las Vegas are at the Sante Fe Station hotel and the Orleans Arena, home of the Las Vegas Wranglers. The Santa Fe's rink was slated to close this year.

Orleans Arena General Manager Steve Stallworth said Tuesday that he hadn't been contacted by any organizations talking about women's hockey.

DeGrandpre cited a number of factors for his team's ownership's desire to sell the team, which stars four Olympic medalist including American Cammi Granato.

"Hockey Canada came down with a ruling last year limiting the number of Americans we could import onto teams in Canada. Cammi expressed concern about it, as did I, as did our new owner," DeGrandpre said. "One of the unique things now, with this being a U.S.-based team, there's not going to be any more of those sanctions," which restricted the number of Americans to two.

DeGrandpre also cited the expense of operating a team out of Vancouver. Other NWHL teams are in Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa, and five teams play in the Toronto metropolitan area.

"We had to bear the most expensive budget of any team in the league, just because of the geographics of where we are located," he said. "Every time we have to play a game, we have to get on an airplane."

The Griffins play around 25 home games a season, and draw between 300 and 600 fans a game to the Queens Park Arena in suburban New Westminster.

But DeGrandpre said that he's optimistic Las Vegas would embrace women's hockey.

"Being here in Vancouver, we lost an NBA team. When you look at how excited people in Memphis are, where our team went to... I'm certainly not comparing our team on the level of the NBA," DeGrandpre said. "But I think Las Vegas was built on a dream, and this is no different. We've created a great deal of media interest, we've attracted some great world-class players, and hopefully it's something people would be excited about."