Achi news desk-
ST. JOHN’S, NL –
The sudden end of the Newfoundland Growlers has left sports fans crushed and business owners worried in a capital city previously scorned by professional hockey teams.
Niall Hickey is co-owner of the Newfoundland Embassy, ​​a lively pub in downtown St. John’s, NL, which was packed before and after Growlers games, no matter how the team was playing.
He said Wednesday he was still in disbelief over the announcement the day before that the ECHL was terminating the Growlers’ membership in the league after nearly six seasons.
“I’m at a loss for words about it,” Hickey said in an interview. “We heard this was coming up, but I didn’t think the team would fold. It’s surprising, and it’s definitely going to make for a tough winter.”
The Growers joined the ECHL in 2018-19 and won the Kelly Cup as league champions in their inaugural season. They won the series on home ice, sending fans streaming into the streets outside the Mary Brown Center – then known as the Mile One Center – and across the road to the Newfoundland Embassy, ​​where the band played the inside a screaming crowd.
The Growlers were the first to win a professional hockey championship for St. John’s, and the win galvanized the city’s support and pride for the team, Hickey said.
It also deepened hopes that the Growlers would be different from the other professional teams that had come and gone in St. John’s, said John Riche, a real estate agent known for being a dedicated fan of the franchise.
Riche watched the St. John’s Maple Leafs, an American Hockey League team, left for Toronto in 2005, and then the AHL’s Ice Caps left for Laval, Que., in 2017.
Unlike those teams, the Growers were locally owned, by Deacon Sports and Entertainment. For some, there was that promise that the team would stick around, since its fate would not be in the hands of “an outside source,” Riche said. “But that wasn’t true.”
The ECHL said Tuesday that its board of governors voted to revoke the membership of the Growlers “for failing to fulfill its obligations” under the league’s bylaws. In a statement, Deacon Sports and Entertainment said it was unable to sell the team from St. John’s before the league deadline on Tuesday.
The Growlers’ last six games of this season have been cancelled, and the team’s players will become free agents.
Riche estimates he’s been to about 150 Growlers games, and said he was “amazed” by their ending.
“I think I’m still reacting,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “In the five stages of grief, I’m somewhere between anger and acceptance, and I cycle back and forth.”
Hickey said other businesses in St. John’s relies on Growlers traffic and will likely have a hard time without them. The community in general will also see success, as the Growers players and managers are always happy to take part in charity events, he added.
The Newfoundland Embassy opened in December 2019, during the team’s first season; the pub has never operated without the Growlers playing, Hickey said. When the current season started last year, Hickey vowed to watch every home game they played, hurrying across the road to the stadium after the pre-game rush, and running back before the final buzzer to meet the fans after the game.
He hadn’t missed a game when the ECHL announced an early end to the team’s season on Tuesday, he said.
“They had our backs from Day One,” Hickey said of his pub’s relationship with the team. “I wish them all the best.”
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on April 3, 2024.
