IHL Team Starts Putting It Together

One of the easiest tasks facing the movers and shakers behind San Diego’s newest professional acquisition, an International Hockey League franchise, is finding a nickname. The community’s ice hockey fans have been assigned that job, asked to call 225-PUCK with suggestions.

Other rudimentary chores will be more complex. Friday at the San Diego Sports Arena, Vin Ciruzzi, co-owner of the club with entrepreneur Harry Cooper, and Don Waddell, its new director of hockey operations, addressed what it will take to have a smooth-running operation by Oct. 5, when the team is scheduled to begin its first season.

“It’s going to be a great challenge for myself and our whole staff once we get in place,” said Waddell, 31, who was a player, assistant coach, general manager and director of operations during his five years with the IHL’s Flint (Mich.) Spirits.

Waddell’s most immediate concerns are hiring a coach and finding 20-22 names to fill the player roster. Waddell doesn’t want to rush--he has a long list of coaching candidates--but said he hopes to fill the position within two weeks.

“We want someone with pro experience, either as a player or coach,” Waddell said. “It will be a major job to bring 22 players together in this short time and start from scratch. We need someone with experience, someone who’s done this before. It won’t be a rookie coach.”

Neither will the San Diego team be charging rookie prices. Adult single-game tickets range from $6 (terrace end zone) to $15.50 (VIP lower loge, includes food and beverage service), with $9.50 and $12.50 seats also available. People 17 and under and 65 and older will get $2 off.

Ciruzzi said the prices are equitable with the MISL Sockers, with whom the hockey team is negotiating over arena space and playing dates.

The Sockers offer seats at three levels: $8, $10.50 and $12.50, and their adult season tickets range from $180 to $300. Season tickets for 41 IHL home games start at $221 and peak at $571.

“We’ve done a lot of research to come up with those prices,” said Ciruzzi, who is also chief executive officer of the Sports Arena. “The $15.50 seats are a small section you’re talking about. You can get a family of four in for $20, and there’s a wide variety of prices.”

Ciruzzi said San Diego followed the lead of the Phoenix Roadrunners in setting prices. Phoenix is one of six cities, including San Diego, that make up the IHL’s Western Division. Last year, the Roadrunners were a first-year independent team. Single-game tickets range from $6 to $12 in Phoenix, season tickets from $246 to $451.

“There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel,” Ciruzzi said. “We’ve gone to Phoenix and Salt Lake City to get as much help as we possibly could. Phoenix has gone through the same thing we are. They’re an independent franchise, and so we followed pretty much what they were doing.”

While not offering any firm solutions on the issue of sharing the arena with the Sockers--with San Diego State another piece of the puzzle--Ciruzzi said he is confident it can be worked out.

“It will be resolved,” he said. “The policy in the past has been to try and make it work for everybody. It doesn’t make sense to have tenants in the building and put them at a disadvantage.”

San Diego will join Phoenix, Kansas City, Albany, N.Y., and Flint as the IHL teams without NHL affiliation. Waddell said he prefers it that way.

“We don’t want to be known as someone else’s affiliate,” Waddell said. “We want to get our own players and establish ourselves within the community so people can recognize with the players. We don’t want our best player and possibly lose him tomorrow (when called up by an NHL team). That’s why it’s important to get 10 or 12 of your own guys to build the team around.”

Waddell said he will try to get five or six veteran players to begin with.

“My list of players has already been started,” he said. “Agents come into a big part of this. There are 125 operating, and I want to make sure I contact every one of them to make sure they know what our situation is.”