I'm going to try a Monday morning/afternoon column called "Monday Musings" and it will be either a singular thought on something or a collection of shorter thoughts sort of like Steve Simmons Sunday column. Today it's all about the Mississauga as an OHL market.
Take the city out of the equation and look at some of the key demographics and a population base of 700K, a thriving minor hockey system and an arena, while just a little over 20 years old, is more than suitable for OHL hockey with a capacity of 6000, great sightlines and an in arena restaurant. Sign me up! It's the perfect OHL market right? Well, its Mississauga and while the franchise has always struggled for a foothold in the population rich GTA, this year it's close to bottoming out with meagre interest and minimal attendance. It might be time to close up shop and move on, or is it?
Mississauga, for all its efforts, has never been able to gain consistent traction in the OHL. It's not for lack of effort, or resources. The marketing has been solid. The branding is very good. There's radio coverage, but no TV coverage (more on that later). They changed names moving on from the old "Majors" to a more sleeker, fan friendly "Steelheads" , had championship caliber teams and players who turned into NHL players. It should have worked, but it also had many, many factors beyond and within their control working against them.
Mississauga was awarded an expansion franchise in 1998-1999 and won a total of four games but did lead the league in penalty minutes, finished dead last in the league five points behind Brampton and 32 points behind the next worse team. The average attendance that year was a respectable 3400 + despite the record. Over the next three years they won nine, three and 11 games respectively and attendance dwindled to the 2500 mark. Not even hot shotting Don Cherry back into coaching worked. The team eventually enjoyed on-ice success going to the OHL Final in 2003-2004 and reaching a high water mark of over 3700 in 2004-2005. After that the crowds went down, and the year they left Mississauga fan attendance was at 2100 and change despite an excellent team that got bounced by the upstart Sudbury Wolves who went all the way to the final that year.
When the IceDogs bolted to Niagara under the new ownership of Bill and Denise Burke, the then Hershey Centre was not without a tenant long as Eugene Melnyk moved his St. Michaels Majors team to Mississauga renaming them the Mississauga-St. Michaels Majors and keeping the old uniforms. That was mistake number one. Fans did not gravitate to the new team as the Majors were the IceDogs biggest rivals. In fact the only game they seemed invested in was when the new IceDogs came to town. What made it worse was that the IceDogs moving to Niagara led to a revival of junior hockey into the area and even today Niagara enjoys one of the best attendances in the league. For four of the five years that the team resided under the Majors banner attendance ranged from 2100-2500, reaching 3100 in 2010-2011 the year the city was awarded the Memorial Cup and went all the way to the OHL final losing the 7th game at home in overtime to Owen Sound who packed the Hershey Center with their own fans. While the Memorial Cup was well-attended the crowds was inflated as a result of comp and reduced priced tickets . After that year the team became the Steelheads and they've put together a compelling and competitive on-ice product and reached the finals in 2016-2017 losing to Erie but also has been drummed out of the playoffs in the 1st round 4 of 5 years. Attendance has eclipsed an average of 3000 once and in 2019-2020 was 2279. This year so far it's 1019, the lowest it has even been by far.
In defense of the franchise, attendance around the league is down. Capacity limits that were recently lifted are one reason and people's lack of comfort in being back in a venue play a role. Being out of the public eye can be an issue too as people find other things to do with their discretionary income. Attendance is soft around the league and in solid markets like Sault Ste Marie and Windsor the drop is in the 30-50% range. You can find the 2021-2022 numbers so far here:
Now you can see how ugly the numbers are in Mississauga so far. A market that has already struggled with traction in the market has bottomed out and it would not be out be out of the realm of possibility to see attendance in the triple digits. Compounding the problem is the lack of local TV. While games are shown on OHL Live it cannot be underestimated the importance of local or regional television.
The problem is that there remains no viable alternative right now. The OHL is now moved into the realm of needing a viable fanbase, good arena, private suites, corporate sponsorship etc to turn a profit. That is not happening in Brantford, Chatham and Cornwall as only Cornwall has a building with the requisite capacity and that needs a fair bit of work done to it. Thunder Bay has been bandied about but I can't see owners wanted the extra cost of flying up there or the league wanting to subsidize. It leaves the OHL with a problem. It's a franchise that likely has run its course but with no viable alternative and a mountainous up hill climb to increase the fanbase, the Steelheads will go lurching on until goodwill with the city runs out and they cannot negotiate a favorable deal or current owner Elliot Kerr runs out of patience and finds a buyer. It's a shame because there are some dedicated fans, people who work hard for the franchise and an on-air product that deserves support.
While I don't like to be the one to sprinkle last rites on a franchise, I can hear the gong that starts the Undertakers music starting to sound for the franchise and the worst part is that too few people will notice if the franchise leaves town.
Steve Clark
Steve is the current TV play-by-play voice of the Niagara IceDogs and has been since 2007 when the team moved from Mississauga to Niagara.
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