Tucson Roadrunners' improbable, fast-tracked inception has them poised for success

Richard Morin | The Republic | azcentral.com

Toward the end of March 2016, a very important phone call came to the offices at Gila River Arena in Glendale.

The call was answered by Coyotes Chief Operating Officer Ahron Cohen. On the line was the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Springfield, Mass. They were calling to let the parent club know they were putting the team up for sale, and were wondering whether the Coyotes would be interested.

That same day, Cohen made the two-hour drive to Tucson. Two years later, the Coyotes and their new AHL affiliate in the Old Pueblo are each reaping the benefits of being so close in proximity

And despite their second-round exit from the Calder Cup playoffs on Friday, there’s no reason to think the Tucson Roadrunners will ever slow down from their fast-tracked inception.

‘We can sleep later’

There aren’t many benefits of having your closest minor-league affiliate 2,607 miles and a seven-hour flight away.

After getting off the phone with Springfield, Cohen’s first thought was about Arizona and what cities nearby could house an AHL club.

Cohen brought a few Coyotes heads together to weigh their options. Their first thought was to replicate what the Sharks did with their AHL affiliate in 2015, moving the team from Worcester, Mass. and sharing the SAP Center with them in San Jose, Calif.

The Coyotes felt that this would be the most easily facilitated option, or at least be a viable temporary solution until they could strike a deal with a more permanent home.

“The challenge with doing that is not having your own identity,” Cohen said. “It wasn’t the right option. We thought it would cannibalize our fans. We wanted to grow hockey in another part of the state.

“When we were looking at different metrics, the thing that stood out to me was that Tucson was largest top-100 metro city in the country without a pro sports team.”

It didn’t take long for Cohen to schedule in-person meetings with Tucson City Manager Michael Ortega and Assistant City Manager Elaine Becherer. His message: The Coyotes were motivated to put their AHL affiliate in their city.

Already, the Coyotes were about three months behind schedule to get a team up and running for the 2016 season. They had until mid-May to get city approval, and they still needed a proper venue to play in, a lease agreement with said venue, organizational staff and many other details to resolve.

“I was going to Tucson every day,” Cohen said. “Working out of hotels and making a permanent home for the time being.”

The Coyotes partnered with Rio Nuevo, a redevelopment district in and around downtown Tucson that provided $3.2 million in capital improvements to Tucson Convention Center, to ready the building for an AHL franchise.

Cohen knew there were going to be a lot of sleepless nights trying to get the team up and running — but there came a point in April when time began to run out.

“There were plenty of excuses not to do this,” Cohen said of a phone call he had that included Rio Nuevo representatives Fletcher McCusker and Mark Irvin in April. “Right then, pretty much all at the same time, we said ‘Let’s get this done now; we can sleep later.'

"And once we made that commitment, it was pedal to the metal until we got this thing done.”

The biggest obstacle remaining was negotiating a lease with the city for the AHL club to become the primary tenants at the TCC.

“In negotiating a lease, like any deal you’re going to have an impasse,” Cohen said of reaching a deal with the city. “We got to that point in late April and it looked like we weren’t going to get a deal.

“This one afternoon..." Cohen said. "We had to either figure it out right then, or it wasn’t going to happen.”

Both literally and figuratively, Cohen and Ortega decided to roll up their sleeves and meet halfway. It was there, while the two ate burgers at a Casa Grande In-N-Out, that the Roadrunners were born.

At the city council meeting on May 17, the Coyotes got unanimous approval to place their AHL affiliate in Tucson to start play in the 2016-17 season, a decision that was met with a standing ovation from those in attendance. They signed a 10-year lease to play at the TCC.

"The city was hungry," Roadrunners President Bob Hoffman said. "Tucson has been burned in the past by some pro sports teams, certainly with baseball and spring training. ... There was an eagerness from the city council side of things and from the Rio Nuevo side of things.

"They wanted another pro sports team here in town and I think we fit that build."

'Put your money where your mouth is'

By the end of May, after two months of commuting and negotiating, the Coyotes knew they were going to have their AHL affiliate playing just two hours away. But, with the season just five months away, the work to make that happen was just beginning.

John Chayka, who that summer was hired by the Coyotes as president of hockey operations and general manager, and assistant general manager Steve Sullivan were tasked with overseeing the on-ice product.

Coyotes equipment manager Stan Wilson made countless trips to Tucson to make sure the team space was up and running when the players eventually arrived and began the regular season in October.

A bond was forged with the community after fans rallied in support of Craig Cunningham, who collapsed on the ice while skating in warmups prior to a Roadrunners game in 2016. The TCC was subsequently filled with people wearing shirts and bracelets reading, "Cunny Can" in the following weeks.

In 2018, the Coyotes can look back at their efforts and already see the payoffs. The Roadrunners went just 29-31-8 in their inaugural season, but finished with a sparkling 42-20-5-1 record in 2017-18 and won the regular-season Pacific Division title.

The benefits of having a minor-league affiliate in Tucson — rather than on the other side of the country — has been extremely beneficial to the Coyotes.

“It was a huge logistical challenge and a hockey operations challenge to have our AHL team owned independently,” Chayka said about the Springfield arrangement. “You can talk about growing the game in Arizona, and for me you can talk draft and developing, but you have to put your money where mouth is.”

Chayka is of the belief that success at the NHL level generally starts at the AHL level. To do that, the Coyotes were better off streamlining the process by acquiring their highest minor-league affiliate and moving it to Arizona.

Moreover, the organization was set on having parallels in place between the two teams. Both the Coyotes and Roadrunners had first-year head coaches this season, and each implemented very similar styles of play. This was not a coincidence.

“For us to keep a tab on guys has been very helpful, in terms of conditioning, player development, going back and forth and doing so with great synergy,” Chayka said. “We’ve created a nice pipeline.”

The Coyotes also wanted their minor-league affiliate to be a strong representation of hockey culture in Arizona. As a result, the last part of the fast-tracked building process became one of the more important — naming the team.

“Roadrunners” was a landslide winner in the nickname contest held by the club, a callback to the IHL’s Phoenix Roadrunners that graced the desert ice from 1989-97. There are also at least five other iterations of the Phoenix Roadrunners that have existed between 1967 and 2009.

“We felt the connection that hockey fans all over Arizona had with the Roadrunners,” Hoffman said. “There are so many stories that I’ve heard from people in Tucson that used to make that trek up to catch a hockey game. For a long time, that was the only option people had.”

Hoffman said the Roadrunners are considered holding an alumni event or even a throwback jersey night next season to “really celebrate that Roadrunner heritage.”

“It’s a state name, and it’s a name that represents hockey in the state of Arizona,” Hoffman said. “We’re proud to continue that tradition down here in Tucson.”

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