Vancouver Targets Seattle Area Nhl Not Likely To Wind Up There, But Canucks Want To Beam In

Seattle is unlikely to be embraced by any National Hockey League expansion. The recent expensive refit of Key Arena will see to that.

More than 17,000 fans can be accommodated at Key Arena for basketball, but 10,000 is a sellout for hockey. So there is a pro hockey vacuum in the Pacific Northwest, and the Vancouver Canucks want to fill it.

Their campaign was officially launched Thursday, when they took TSN’s broadcast of the Canucks-New York Rangers game, added their own pregame show and intermission material, and beamed the product to KIRO-TV in Seattle.

Actually, the Canucks’ lobbying began a month ago. That’s when tough guy forward Tim Hunter and goaltender Kirk McLean started making guest appearances on KJR, Seattle’s No. 1 sport radio station.

Also, negotiations have been continuing between the Canucks and Prime Sports Northwest, the sports cable channel that serves Seattle.

And deals are being struck with bus and hotel companies to offer hockey packages to fans in Seattle, which is 3 hours from Vancouver, and in Bellingham, a city an hour’s drive away.

There will probably be a preseason game or two next autumn in Washington, but there are no plans to play regular-season games south of the border.

So what can the Canucks hope to gain? Maybe a steady stream of a few hundred fans, maybe some merchandise sales and perhaps one day a television package that would pay handsomely.

“There’s a definite opportunity there to cultivate,” said John Chapple, president of Orca Bay Sport & Entertainment, the company that owns the Canucks, the Vancouver Grizzlies of the NBA and General Motors Place.

Three of the top four executives in Orca Bay - Chapple, co-chairman and part-owner John McCaw and vice-chairman Stan McCammon - live in Seattle.

“We’ve hired an individual who works out of Seattle who is responsible for (increasing the team’s visibility),” Chapple said. “We’re looking at Seattle north to the border as a market area. We’ve had discussions with the Bellingham papers about coverage and about various contests. And we can create a very large footprint for ourselves through broadcasts.”

Whenever a team wants to expand its presence in a significant market that is, say, a few hours away, everyone wants to know whether games will be shifted. But in many ways TV is more important than live presence. A 30-game television schedule will do more than one live event.

NBA commissioner David Stern is often asked how he hopes to spread the popularity of his league to Europe if he is not planning to expand there. His stock answer is “The Cosby Show” was No. 1 in France for a year but never filmed a single episode there.

“The reaction we get from the (Seattle) area is very low at this point,” said Arthur Griffiths, Orca Bay co-chairman and part-owner, and Canucks governor. “Where do I think it can go? Our franchise, with some of the exciting players we have, I think we could really catch on down there.”

Seattle is not currently part of the Canucks market. The NHL gives its teams a 75-mile radius from the outer limits of the city borders. The Canucks’ radius begins basically at the U.S. border and includes Bellingham but not Seattle. So the team had to gain approval from both the league and ESPN for Thursday’s broadcast and will have to do the same for any future ventures.

Hunter has a house in Bellingham and his wife’s family lives in Seattle. He says there is more interest in hockey in both areas than people think.

“My mother-in-law has a tavern and they have people coming in all the time to see games on the dish,” Hunter said. “There’s a big following there (Seattle) and there’s a big following in Bellingham, too.”

The NHL is almost certainly going to Portland, where the new Rose Garden was built with hockey as well as basketball in mind. The only question there is whether Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will buy and move an existing team or go the expansion route to have a club to share the Rose Garden with his NBA Portland Trail Blazers. Bet on a team filling the Portland market before the turn of the century.

The Canucks will hope to have quenched Seattle’s hockey thirst long before that.