Maybe Las Vegas’ NHL ticket drive isn’t going as well as we think

By now you’ve read the news, heard the trumpets blaring from here to NHL headquarters in New York to old Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto — maybe even to War Memorial Arena in the Federal Hockey League, home of the fictional Charlestown Chiefs of “Slap Shot” fame:

A proposed Las Vegas NHL expansion/relocation franchise has reached the halfway mark in its stated goal of obtaining 10,000 season-ticket deposits.

The halfway mark was reached in around 36 hours. This seemed like great news.

(Just don’t ask the organist at War Memorial Arena to play “Lady of Spain” if Reggie Dunlop’s in the house.)

And it was great news, at least until you read that when it was decided the foundering Atlanta Thrashers should move to Winnipeg before the 2011-12 NHL season, the Jets locked up 13,000 season-ticket deposits in seven minutes.

Five minutes for fighting.

Two minutes for roughing.

Seven minutes.

All season tickets spoken for in Manitoba.

Even in Canada, where hockey is a religion played among gap-toothed patron saints, that was amazing.

Yes, it was still great news that Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak and lots of others had put down ticket deposits before anybody drives the Zamboni. But Las Vegas didn’t come within a two-line offside pass (provided they still existed) of breaking the record for premature interest in the NHL.

Perhaps if every order for hockey tickets came with a line pass to White Castle, we would have reached 10,000 by now.

So Winnipeg still has the record, as it should, because hell sometimes freezes over in October in Winnipeg, which helps make it a fine hockey town. Plus, Winnipeg once had an NHL team before its current one, the first incarnation of the Jets, who started out in the World Hockey Association before being absorbed by the NHL and then by Phoenix, where it struggles at the turnstiles.

Thus Winnipeg has a proud hockey tradition; Bobby Hull, hockey’s famous “Golden Jet,” played there after he was through lighting the red lamp for the Blackhawks.

As The Canadian Press pointed out, Winnipeg and Las Vegas are different situations because Winnipeg knew it was getting a team for sure, and “aside from the ECHL’s Wranglers, Las Vegas doesn’t have a hockey history.”

I catch their drift, but this is where I and others would point out that from 1993 through 1999, Las Vegas had the Thunder of the International Hockey League. And the Thunder had Radek Bonk, who scored 42 goals here as a teenager, before he was old enough to be drafted by an NHL team and played 969 games on the big frozen ponds.

The Thunder featured dozens of former NHL players, some of whom still live here. The team was more successful than the Wranglers from an attendance standpoint and an interest standpoint.

An average of 8,018 paying customers watched the Thunder during their inaugural season, and 7,877, 7,771 and 7,721 watched over the next three seasons. Then the novelty wore off, and then glasnost with their landlord wore off.

Average attendance dipped to 6,661 and 5,001 during the last two seasons, but by then, it was clear the Thunder would be put into mothballs when its lease at the Thomas &Mack Center was up.

It was fun while it lasted. If you were there when the Village People played postgame concerts and felt the Plexiglas rattle whenever Darcy “Chainsaw” Loewen planted one of the San Diego Gulls or Fort Wayne Komets nose first, then I don’t have to tell you how much fun the Thunder were, or how successful they were.

At least over the short haul.

But that was minor league hockey, albeit the highest level of minor league hockey, and this, if/when it happens, will be major league hockey. Maybe it’ll be different over the long haul this time.

The team might not even have to win, at least not at first. It will at some point, though. Probably about the time the novelty of paying $20 to park one’s car wears off.

Whereas Winnipeg may tolerate a losing team, and Toronto, too, those are hockey towns. Las Vegas is a Cirque du Soleil town. Cirque du Soleil is based in Montreal, but that may be as close to the vaunted Canadiens as we’re going to get here for a while.

The Winnipeg Jets have existed in some shape or form for 34 years. They have never advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals. That wouldn’t sit well in Las Vegas. Ask Dave Rice.

Which is why if/when we get a team, the scouts had better do their homework before the expansion and dispersal drafts.

This isn’t Winnipeg, where hell sometimes freezes over in October, where Bobby Hull once lit the red lamp, where people put down 13,000 deposits for hockey season tickets in seven minutes.

A glance at current NHL attendance figures shows the Jets with an average of 15,126 paying customers (100 percent occupancy) over 28 games. Which by Las Vegas sporting standards, seems fantastic.

By NHL standards, it ranks 25th among the 30 franchises.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.