S.D. to Get Hockey Team; Sockers Owner Concerned

A professional hockey franchise will play in the San Diego Sports Arena this fall, it was announced Thursday, and the owner of the Sockers said the move may endanger the future of his championship soccer team.

Harry Cooper, leaseholder of the Sports Arena, and representatives of the International Hockey League announced that San Diego has been awarded an expansion franchise that will schedule 41 dates at the arena for the next season beginning in October. Cooper posted a $2-million letter of credit when his application was approved.

The IHL is considered the top minor league system for the National Hockey League. Cooper, who hopes to eventually land an NHL team for an arena he wants to build on property he owns in Sorrento Hills, views this award as a steppingstone. The IHL team will start as an independent franchise, but Cooper said he will attempt to establish a link to an NHL team before the 1991-92 season.

Ron Fowler, owner of the Sockers for the past three seasons, said he will attempt to meet with Cooper and Vin Ciruzzi, president of the Sports Arena, and request that they consider starting with hockey in 1991 rather than this fall. But Cooper said Thursday that the hockey team will definitely play here this year.

Fowler said he wasn’t notified of the possibility of an IHL franchise coming to San Diego until late Monday afternoon.

“I resent the way it’s been handled,” he said. “If they were going to do this, I think they should have talked to us about it some time ago.”

San Diego has had four previous professional hockey teams: the Skyhawks of the Pacific Coast Hockey League, the Gulls of the Western Hockey League, the Mariners of the World Hockey Assn. and the Hawks of the Pacific Hockey League. The Skyhawks played from 1939 to 1947, the Gulls, Mariners and Hawks played in succession from 1966 to 1979.

The NHL is scheduled to award two or three expansion franchises in December. Cooper hopes San Diego will be one of them.

“We want to send them a message that we’re ready for the National Hockey League,” he said by telephone from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is attending NHL meetings. “I think San Diego is a hockey town. Everywhere I go in the past year, so many people are saying that they are hockey fans, and they are going to support the effort.”

What remains to be seen is whether San Diego can support both hockey and indoor soccer. Fowler is concerned that there won’t be enough time to make arrangements for the Sports Arena to accommodate two professional franchises. The season for the Major Indoor Soccer League--to which the Sockers belong--nearly parallels the IHL’s, beginning at the end of October and usually ending early in June.

The Sockers clinched their eighth indoor soccer championship in nine years last Friday.

“I think to try to be up and running with a new hockey franchise this year does not make a great deal of sense,” Fowler said. “I wish they’d gotten the franchise and taken a year to put it together. That would have given us a year to do things on a realistic, organized basis and probably would have assured that we had two teams in the Sports Arena. Given what’s happening now, unless we’re able to work something out that makes sense, I’m not encouraged at all.

“I don’t think they realize the level of outrage that’s going to exist with a number of people within the community,” he said. “I think they’ve handled this in a very cavalier fashion, and it’s inconsistent with the way they’ve done a lot of other things.”

Among the problems Fowler wants to address are game scheduling and the sharing of both advertising revenues and office space. Cooper, who will work with Ciruzzi to form the franchise’s principal ownership, said the Sports Arena will make every effort to take care of the Sockers, but that those efforts will not include a postponement of the IHL’s debut here.

“I can’t imagine why we should do that,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why we couldn’t start it” this year.

Cooper said he doesn’t think such a start will present any serious operating problems for the Sockers.

“I wouldn’t be out looking for another franchise if it was going to be at the expense of the Sockers,” he said. “I’m a soccer fan. I want the team to succeed. It’s important that we don’t bring in one team and get rid of another one.”

The Sockers’ primary source of advertising revenue is the dasher boards that surround the playing area. Cooper said they will be redesigned so they are interchangeable, allowing both teams to advertise at full capacity.

According to Cooper, office space at the Sports Arena will be shared, meaning the Sockers will have to move some employees elsewhere.

Switching the playing surface from ice to a soccer field will increase maintenance costs but can be done fairly quickly, Cooper said. Insulation will be put on top of the ice, then covered by the soccer carpet.

The San Diego IHL team is still missing many pieces. Cooper said he hasn’t yet made final decisions on a coach or a general manager, but he hopes to have them in place in time for a scheduled news conference next Friday.

Division alignments for the 11-team IHL are expected to be determined today.

Cooper said he does not yet know what type of attendance will be needed for his franchise to break even financially.

THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE

Background: Founded in Windsor, Canada, in 1945, the IHL began with four teams and was designed to absorb young players returning from World War II. The Detroit Auto Club was the first champion in 1946, winning what still is known as the Turner Cup. The league has operated continuously since, but rarely with the same teams returning each season; 1965-66 was the first year in which it was configured as it had been the previous year, and the league has had a different look in 19 out of the past 24 seasons. The 1989-90 champion was the Indianapolis Ice.

Affiliations: Most IHL franchises are tied directly to National Hockey League teams, with players moving between the two leagues. In 1989-90, two franchises--Fort Wayne (Ind.) and Phoenix--were independent, each with loose ties to several NHL teams. San Diego is expected to operate this way at first.

Season: Teams play from the first week in October into May, with 82 regular-season games. In 1989-90, eight of the league’s nine teams--four each from the West and East divisions--made the playoffs. Quarterfinals, semifinals and finals were decided by best-of-seven-games series.

Teams: Flint (Mich.) Spirits, Ft. Wayne (Ind.) Komets, Indianapolis Ice, Kalamazoo (Mich.) Wings, Kansas City Blades, Muskegon (Mich.) Lumberjacks, Milwaukee Admirals, Phoenix Roadrunners, Peoria (Ill.) Rivermen, Salt Lake Golden Eagles, San Diego. Ft. Wayne is seeking a move to Albany, N.Y.