BAKERSFIELD, CALIF.

The Edmonton Oilers are poised to announce the purchase of the most fun franchise in all of professional hockey.

Sometime this month, your correspondent has learned, Daryl Katz will become owner of the Oilers ECHL farm franchise which currently stars goaltender Laurent Brossoit and has had incredible international publicity from several wacky and wonderful promotions.

The Oilers relocated their Double A minor league farm affiliation here from Stockton this year.

The team has been owned for 16 years by Wall Street’s Jonathan Fleisig, a previous owner of the Las Vegas Wranglers and current owner of baseball minor league Lake Country Fielders of the Northern League and the Lorado Lemurs of the American Association.

The idea of the NHL Oilers deciding to purchase the franchise is believed to be motivated by having the ability to control the supply of prospects not signed to NHL or AHL contracts.

The appeal of owning the team is having the ability to convince undrafted players without contracts to play here. They’d be joining a team where they’d know there’d be eyes on them all the time, a big appeal for players in the low minors.

But it also looks to be a pretty good purchase as a business and certainly to have a little fun with, even though the Oilers organization hasn’t been a real fun outfit in recent years. Maybe something might rub off.

The Condors have averaged 5,101 fans so far this season. They currently rank seventh in the 23-team league where Bakersfield has consistently ended up in the top five drawing franchises, despite missing the playoffs the last two years in the Western Conference, where eight of the nine teams make the playoffs. Hard to do.

“This year we guaranteed if we didn’t make the playoffs you’d get free season tickets or six packs next year,” said Ryan Holt, director of broadcasting and media relations.

The Condors started the season 1-10-1 but have since got hot with Brossoit.

The club has out-drawn the Oilers’ Oklahoma City Barons AHL franchise, which is averaging 3,244 after averaging 3,788 the previous three seasons combined. OKC was dead last in AHL attendance last year.

The Condors are having so much fun here they’re bringing back memories of baseball promoter Bill Veeck.

They haven’t figured out how to do the equivalent of sending a midget to bat yet, like Veeck did with the old St. Louis Browns with Eddie Gaedel. They haven’t figured out a twist to replicate his “Grandstand Manager’s Day” where thousands of fans held up placards to vote on various in-game decisions. There’s no exploding scoreboard like the one Veeck invented in Comiskey Park, when he owned the Chicago White Sox. And fortunately they haven’t had a Disco Demolition Night which resulted in a riot and a forfeit of a game.

But they did have a live condor last season and you are hereby given permission to interrupt reading this column to go to YouTube and type “condor takes over hockey game, owner falls trying to catch bird” to watch one of the most hilarious moments in pro sports promotional history.

“The clip was shown on Good Morning America and we even got calls from Japan for it. And at the end of the year it was on everybody’s blooper reel,” said Holt.

This year the Condors brought the condor back for opening night without incident.

Actually, it was a different Condor. Queen Victoria was the Condor’s condor last year. This year it was King Edward, her brother. And for full disclosure, Queen Victoria and King Edward are actually Andean condors, not California condors, which are an endangered species and not legal to own in the U.S.A.

Veeck would love this team.

“The spirit of Bill Veeck is definitely alive here,” said Kevin Bartl, VP of communications.

Veeck invented Ladies Night. Here last night the Condors game featured the first-ever “Hockey & Heels Night”, a ladies night with a chance to win a date with Condor Spenser Bennett.

Next month the Condors are giving away two funeral plots at the Historic Union Cemetery where Col. Baker, the man for whom Bakersfield is named, is buried.

It was the Condors who last year during the lockout offered Justin Beiber an amateur tryout contract.

“We put out a press release with some pretty funny quotes and it seemed to have its own life after that,” said Holt, director of media relations who is also the team play-by-play with Bartl as his colour commentator.

Veeck had many claims to fame, including being first to put the names of players on the back of uniforms. The Condors one-upped him on that. They put the Gettysburg Address on theirs this year. One of the most publicized promotions at any level of sport this year was the Condors Gettysburg Address jersey.

It went viral. Massive publicity.

The Condors lead all leagues in jerseys.

They’ve had 9-11 jerseys, space jerseys, leap-year jerseys, Pearl Harbour jerseys, St. Patricks Day jerseys, country music jerseys, Santa Claus jerseys …

“We’ve had about 30 different jerseys. One of the best ones was our Michael Jackson jersey. All our guys played wearing one white glove that night,” said Holt.

“Bakersfield’s own Jake Varnet won a gold medal at the London Olympics so we wore a jersey designed to look like his wrestling singlet, complete with fake muscles and his gold medal.

“All the jersey promotions raise between $10,000 and $15,000 for local charities. Keith Olberman of ESPN gave us a lot of publicity and bought Chet Pickard’s jersey for $2,000.”

The giveaway nights have gone so far as to give fans toilet plungers with the logo of rival Stockton on the business end. They’ve also done the same thing with specially printed rolls of toilet paper.

A highlight of a visit here is to tour the offices of the Condors where team president Matthew Riley’s office is basically a museum of Condors promotions and giveaways.

“Coming up with the ideas is sort of a team thing,” said Holt. “It comes from a lot of different people, including our fans. The Gettysburg Address shirt idea came to us by e-mail from a fan who note it was the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and thought it would be a good idea. It was the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. I thought it was a terrible idea.

“The best ones seem to come from Matt Riley when he’s working out on the StairMaster. One of his big ones was to hold a Charlie Sheen Night when things were going a bit loony for him. It came out that his net worth was listed at $2 million, so we offered to sell him the team for $2 million.”

Free admission with drug tests was the feature of Charlie Sheen Night along with tiger blood crushed ice drinks and Charlie Sheen cardboard masks for all.

Not all the promotions are winners. The Sarah Palin promotion earned Bartl an angry call from a female, which ended up in his meeting the woman who became his wife.

“I’m pretty sure we get more time on ESPN than the rest of the teams in our league combined,” said Holt.

“There’s no bad ideas,” said president Riley. “The ideas come from a culture of having fun and trying stuff. That’s what the Condors are all about. Having fun.”

You get the idea.

“They are a very outside-the-box thinking organization and they’re the only show in town during hockey season, and have tremendous support and have earned that,” said OKC general manager Bill Scott, who is the Oilers organization liaison with the Condors.

“I really think they do a great job.”

But it’s mostly hockey reasons believed to be behind the soon-to-close sale of the Condors to the Oilers.

Scott, who was not available for comment after your correspondent’s discovery of the impending sale, spoke about the affiliation change during the interview.

“It wasn’t something we set out to do. We were not unhappy in Stockton,” he said.

The Condors came into existence as the Bakersfield Fog of the West Coast Hockey League in 1995-96 and were coached for three years by Wayne’s brother Keith Gretzky. They went into the ECHL in 2004-05.

It was a combination of what the organization thought Stockton was losing in coach Matt Thomas, who took a job as head coach at the U of Alaska at Anchorage, according to Scott.

“The combination of Matt leaving and Bakersfield hiring John Oliver as GM and hiring Troy Mann as head coach had a lot to do with it. I’d worked with both Oliver and Mann and had a great deal of confidence in them.

“I really liked they way the Condors were changing their hockey operations. Stockton didn’t have a GM and didn’t have an assistant coach, which is very normal.

“As an organization for development, it was second to none. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Apparently now that the Oilers are poised to buy the Condors, it falls into the same category.

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terry.jones@sunmedia.ca