Hockeytown, California

Ice hockey has grown dramatically in the Golden State, but can it continue to thrive amid rising costs?

Cameras are clicking, and nervous anticipation fills the room. Wayne Gretzky, fresh faced and emotional, dabs his eyes with a tissue. He takes a sip of water and tries to spit out the words, but his sobs won't allow him to. "I promised Mess I wouldn't do this," he says, referring to his teammate Mark Messier. "But um, as I said, there comes a time when…," Gretzky says, trailing off.

We got Gretzky. Eat your heart out, world.

Having just finished his ninth National Hockey League season, coming off his team's fourth Stanley Cup championship, "The Great One" stood up from his chair, too choked up to continue.

That news conference, where it was announced that Gretzky would be traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, will mark its 30-year anniversary in August.

It was, and still is, one of the biggest trades in the history of professional sports. The anticipation from the beginning was huge.

"We got Gretzky," one Los Angeles Times columnist wrote. "Eat your hearts out, world." "Wayne was the catalyst in Edmonton," one NHL executive told the Times. "He can serve the same purpose down there. I think it's a tremendous deal for Los Angeles."

Although Gretzky's nearly eight seasons with the Kings did not result in a Stanley Cup title, his presence in Los Angeles would change the landscape for good. Players, coaches, executives and fans attribute the growth of ice hockey in California, especially Southern California, to the arrival of Gretzky on Aug. 9, 1988.

USA Hockey, the national governing body for amateur play, did not collect participation records as far back as 1988. However, unitedstatesofhockey.com did collect the numbers from USA Hockey starting in 1990-91, Gretzky's third year in LA.

In 1990-91, USA Hockey reported 4,830 players registered in California. Two years later, the number stood at 9,316 and by 1995-96, the year the Kings traded Gretzky, the number reached 15,537 players.

It has been 22 years since Gretzky last donned a Kings jersey. Yet the growth of ice hockey in California has continued. USA Hockey has shattered participation records every year in California since 2010-11, reaching 29,849 registered players last year.

The growth appears to be happening at all levels, for boys and girls, youth to high school and beyond.

Daryl Evans, who scored the game-winning goal in "The Miracle on Manchester" (more on that later), began his NHL career with the Kings in 1981 and has been involved in promoting hockey in Southern California since he arrived. He now works as a radio color commentator for Kings broadcasts.

Evans has witnessed a snowball effect in the growth of hockey. More options to play in Southern California have kept many skilled players, who in years past would have been forced to leave the state to find better competition, close to home. This boost in participation has fueled more visibility, which then works to attract more players.

"It's encouraging more kids to hang around," Evans said, citing the advent of youth leagues and high school teams, including a program funded by the Kings. "Because of the programs that we now have locally, throughout California, those kids are staying here. Because of that, now all of a sudden, their peers are around them, and they become mentors for the rest of the school and the young kids coming up."

Girls' participation has the potential to expand significantly in the next few years because of the recent success of the U.S. women's national team, culminating in its gold medal win at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Cayla Barnes, a defenseman on the team, hails from Southern California.

Cayla Barnes, a defender for the U.S. women's hockey team that won a gold medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, is from Southern California.

Courtesy: BDZ Sports

Emma Tani, hockey development coordinator for the Kings, credits the role the U.S. women's team plays as ambassadors for the sport.

"Seeing how much of an impact the Olympics had is really exciting, especially for girls in Southern California who have these idols now to look up to," said Tani, who played boys' and girls' hockey growing up in Orange County. "It's really exciting for the sport."

Relatively new high school hockey leagues have seen remarkable growth, already drawing hundreds of players. The Kings and their NHL rivals the Anaheim Ducks have started high school leagues. The two franchises seek to use the programs to boost interest in the sport and add to their fan bases.

Joey Cianfrani is a junior playing on the Newport-Mesa Ice Kings, a team consisting of players from multiple Orange County high schools. He was chosen to represent his team in the Anaheim Ducks High School Hockey League junior varsity all-star game at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

"It's pretty cool," he said. "Not a lot of people really play hockey. So when my name comes over the loudspeaker, I get to brag and tell all my friends I played in the Honda Center."

Some would argue that California is already "hockeytown" as judged by the skill of the state's best players. Jay Trotta, who started playing in Southern California in 1977, now coaches the El Segundo Strikers of the Los Angeles Kings High School Hockey League. He believes that California is on par with other states.

"We have a very high skill level, and there is a very, very committed group of players that put a lot of time into their game," Trotta said. "It's become much more competitive, and if you are from this area nowadays, people take you serious around the country. You're not like a novelty anymore like you used to be."

Thanks to Gretzky and help from professional franchises, hockey has defied many of the obstacles that made it an obscure sport in Southern California. Unfortunately, barriers still remain.

California still trails the five biggest hockey-playing states in the nation as measured by USA Hockey membership: Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Illinois and New York. Southern California specifically faces two major interrelated obstacles: climate and cost.

It's expensive to keep a rink cold in a desert, so operators charge more for ice time to cover those costs and make a profit.

In addition, even though hockey is not as popular as some other sports, Southern California still has a large number of people who want ice time for other events like figure skating. That high demand combined with limited ice supply drives up the price of renting the ice.

Sgt. Chris Cognac of the Hawthorne Police Department is the founder of the Hawthorne Force program, which gives young boys whose families can't afford hockey the opportunity to play. He explains why potential entrepreneurs chose not to build new ice arenas.

"When you have land value, ice rinks don't generate the amount of money that retail stores have in LA or condos," Cognac said.

Limited ice availability translates to higher per hour rental fees for customers. "They have to pay a lot of money," Cognac said. "The average is about $450 an hour. That's pretty significant."

California's climate plays another role: Hockey faces stiff competition from sports that can be played outdoors, year-round and practically anywhere, whether in an empty parking lot or a park or a school playing field, and that do not require expensive equipment. Soccer, baseball and basketball, which are all more popular than hockey, can be organized and played relatively easily and cheaply. Football, which requires expensive pads and helmets when tackling is involved, can be played as touch or flag football at a much lower cost.

Even street hockey requires sticks, goals and a ball. It's no surprise that kids and adults do not consider hockey their first choice when picking up a new sport.

As proponents for hockey work out the answers to make it easier to access, they are building on a history that started in California more than 100 years ago.

First Period

Fresh Ice

The Los Angeles Athletic Club and the University Club contested the first ice hockey game in Los Angeles at the Ice Palace on Feb. 1, 1917. Warde Fowler covered the game for the LA Times.

In his story, headlined "Ice Hockey Introduced to Enthusiastic Fans," Fowler wrote, "No one was killed outright." The game he described sounded similar to modern hockey. It was just as exciting and confounding to new fans: "When a player can't think of anything else to do, he swats the bean toward the goal keeper with all his might. If this man is lucky he gets out of the way. If he isn't they carry him over to one side of the rink, place him gently on his back and tell him to keep cool till the undertaker arrives."

Headline of LA Times writer Warde Fowler's story covering the first hockey game in Los Angeles.

Courtesy: LA Times

Since then, Southern California has had a long history with hockey.

If you've ever seen a game, you might have heard the name Zamboni.

Much like Kleenex, Xerox and Jell-O, Zamboni is actually a brand which has become synonymous for the machine that cleans ice in skating rinks. It was invented by Frank Zamboni in Paramount, California. The Zamboni was patented in 1953 and has been cleaning ice in rinks around the world ever since. It has even been featured in a pop song and had a cameo in the movie "Deadpool."

For decades, Zambonis have driven down residential streets in Paramount to be tested at Paramount Iceland, a rink that Zamboni, his brother Lawrence and a cousin built in 1939.

College and professional hockey trace their California and LA roots back almost a century. The state's first professional hockey league began in the mid-1920s with the start of the California Hockey League. The minor professional league featured teams including the Los Angeles Richfields, Hollywood Millionaires, Oakland Sheiks, Los Angeles Maroons and San Francisco Tigers. It operated for roughly half a decade, losing and gaining teams yearly.

The Los Angeles Monarchs, a minor professional team, competed in various forms in the first half of the 20th century. They are credited with becoming Los Angeles' first professional hockey champions, when they won the Pacific Coast Hockey League in 1947.

After the Monarchs folded in 1950, professional hockey would not return to LA until 1961, when the Los Angeles Blades began play. The Blades existed until 1967, playing in the Western Hockey league. The team had six relatively unsuccessful seasons, only making the playoffs twice during their lifetime.

The Blades did, however, have major historical significance. Their roster featured the man who had broken the NHL's color barrier, Willie O'Ree. O'Ree was a top scorer for the Blades for each of the team's six seasons.

Early College Powerhouses

During the tumultuous times of early professional hockey in Southern California, amateur hockey was also making inroads. The University of Southern California organized its first club hockey team in 1925, facing club teams from other schools like Loyola Marymount and UCLA in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley in Northern California.

USC and other colleges elevated their club teams to intercollegiate status between 1929 and 1941. During that period, the Trojans and Loyola Marymount had a bitter rivalry that once drew 8,000 fans to a game, described by Sports Illustrated in a 1987 article.

USC had two perfect seasons and a 31-game winning streak, beating Big Ten Champion Minnesota four times in 1938 and 1939. Loyola star John Polich even went on to play for the NHL's New York Rangers.

Southern California hockey at the intercollegiate level fizzled out a couple of years later, after the 1940-41 season, and remained just a distant memory when Sports Illustrated caught up with Arnold Eddy, USC's coach throughout that early run, in 1987. "It's just a lost cause in this climate," he told the magazine.

The tradition of club college hockey continues today, but no Los Angeles-area university fields an intercollegiate-level team.

Royal Return and Mighty Triumph

The NHL made its debut in Southern California when Jack Kent Cooke, who already owned the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association, was granted an expansion franchise to establish the Los Angeles Kings in 1966.

The Kings, who played their first game in October 1967, had moderate success throughout their first two decades of existence and featured star players like Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Rogie Vachon.

Even before they snagged Wayne Gretzky, the Kings had a signature moment that helped cement their place in LA sports.

Los Angeles faced the talented Edmonton Oilers and their star player, Gretzky, in the opening round of the 1981-82 Stanley Cup playoffs. With the series tied at one game apiece and the Oilers leading 5-0 in the third period in Los Angeles, the Kings mounted a five-goal comeback. They would win 6-5 in overtime on a goal from Daryl Evans. Fans dubbed the comeback "The Miracle on Manchester" after the street where the Forum, the Kings' arena at the time, is located.

Evans recalled that Angelenos in that era, even if they weren't native, loved hockey.

"I think we had a small nucleus of fans, a very passionate group of fans, and probably a lot of them are still with us today, but it was a limited group," he said. "A lot of transplanted Canadians, East Coast people, but they really liked the game."

Once Gretzky came, the sport exploded: "It was immediate. The minute Wayne came, you'd see the 99 jerseys all over the place," Evans said, referring to his old teammate's uniform number which has been retired by every team in the league. "Without Gretzky, I don't think it would've happened."

Evans' firsthand experience says a lot, but the numbers themselves are staggering. Participation in California, as measured by USA Hockey, grew 221 percent between 1990, two years after Gretzky joined the Kings, and 1996, the year he was traded to the St. Louis Blues. That time period includes the Kings' most successful season with Gretzky on the roster when they lost to the Montreal Canadians in the 1993 Stanley Cup Final.

Luc Robitaille, the Kings franchise leader in goals and a mainstay of the Kings before, during and after the Gretzky years, noticed the growth in another significant way. "Within four years," he told Vice Sports, "there were 10 to 12 rinks that were built."

Gretzky has had a lasting impact on Los Angeles. There are now a number of California natives born during the Gretzky era who play in the NHL. Veteran players Kevan Miller, Matt Nieto and Beau Bennett were born in LA County.

Some argue that Gretzky's influence, though crucial in Los Angeles, did not reach farther south. Gabby Wanchek, who coaches hockey clinics at the Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo, grew up in Orange County, remembers the area as a dead zone for hockey even while Gretzky was in LA.

"At that point, the Kings were here. Some people knew who they were, but there was no coverage on television. There was nothing," she said.

That changed in 1993 when Walt Disney Co. was awarded a franchise to expand the NHL into Anaheim. The company would name the team the Mighty Ducks after the youth team in the 1992 Disney movie of the same name.

Wanchek said people were skeptical at first: "It was like, 'Oh God, what is this? What are they doing?' To try to make the actual sports team off a movie. What is this junk?" But the team did have an impact. "All of a sudden, people were getting interested," she said.

With the combined power of the Ducks' arrival and Gretzky's dominance with the Kings, California's participation in ice hockey ballooned from 4,483 in 1990-91 to 17,355 in 1999-2000, according to USA Hockey.

The Anaheim Ducks logo at the Honda Center. The logo has been in use since 2006 when the team dropped the word "mighty" from their name.

The rate of growth would slow through the 2000s, with participation reaching 20,404 in 2009-10. Even during that period, the success of the Ducks helped. The team, which dropped the "Mighty" from its name during that time, won Southern California's first Stanley Cup championship in 2007.

"The Kings Are the Kings"

"The Kings are the Kings," play-by-play man Mike Emrick said as time expired in Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup. Five years after the Ducks' win, the Kings' 2012 Stanley Cup title would be the first for Southern California's oldest NHL team.

The Kings would win again two seasons later, and USA Hockey enrollment kept pace, growing by about 2,000 in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

The Kings and Ducks have also worked off the ice to try to grow hockey. Both teams have opened and purchased hockey rinks around the area, started high school hockey leagues and worked to make hockey more affordable for players.

But hockey is still prohibitively expensive for many, which is why current developments in California's hockey landscape are just as vital as the success of the past.

2nd Period

The Rise of High School Hockey in Southern California

High School Hockey Night

Relatively new high school hockey leagues have seen remarkable growth, already drawing hundreds of players. The Kings and their NHL rivals the Anaheim Ducks have started high school leagues. The two franchises seek to use the programs to boost interest in the sport, add to their fan bases and, who knows, eventually find home-grown players for their teams.

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Southern California Hockey Voices

It has taken a large group effort to grow the sport of hockey in Southern California. Hear from some of the people involved.

Third Period

Hockey is For Everyone

The Hawthorne Police Department is working to make hockey more affordable.

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NHL Hall of Famer Bobby Orr said it best: "Playing with my buddies, whether it's on the bay or the river or the school rink, parking lot, playing hockey, those are my fondest memories. We'd have our skates and our stick, and away we'd go, and your parents would say, 'Be home by dark.'"

That has long been the romantic view of hockey. It's also how some of history's best players got their starts. Orr, Gretzky and Gordie Howe could all walk out of their houses and play on Canada's frozen playgrounds with their friends.

That obviously is not an option in Southern California.

Even if it were, the basic equipment required to play hockey competitively is expensive. A Utah State University survey conducted in 2016 found that families with a youth hockey player spend an average of $7,956 on the sport. The maximum found by the survey was $19,000.

By comparison, the typical family spent $2,292 when all youth sports were averaged.

The numbers for hockey might seem high, but when you consider everything required to play, the list gets very long: skates, shin pads, athletic protector, hockey socks, hockey pants, neck guard, mouth guard, shoulder pads, elbow pads, gloves, jersey, helmet, hockey tape, skate laces, skate sharpening and gas expenses for away games.

Much of this equipment isn't suggested - it's required by teams and rinks for liability reasons.

Desert Ice

Hockey equipment does not make up the entire $7,956 average that families spend on hockey. Much of it comes from the price to join a youth hockey team.

Teams must rent ice time for practices and games, so families must contribute a membership fee to offset that cost.

California ice is very expensive. The Kings run camps in places like Utah, said Emma Tani, the hockey development coordinator, "and it's $100 to $200 to get an hour of ice. Here it's $400, $500 for an hour."

Membership dues to play for the Los Angeles Junior Kings, one of the better-known youth programs in Southern California, cost $3,575 to $6,975. Others are not far behind.

This makes sense: Places like Minnesota, Michigan and New England, where hockey is king, endure long, cold winters. In addition to having easy access to natural ice, keeping indoor ice frozen is easier in those places than in Southern California, where the average high temperature rarely dips below 65 degrees.

Add the diverse pursuits of Southern Californians, who are interested in activities like figuring skating, free skating, broom ball and even curling, and you've got high demand for ice and low supply, driving up the price.

"I think just getting these kids on the ice and ice availability is so huge for us," Tani said. "It's hard to find ice around here, so getting another rink would be so good for our league but also growing the sport in general."

LAKHSHL: The El Segundo Strikers and the West Ranch Wildcats both play in the LAKHSHL, which gives high school age kids the chance to play for their schools.

Filling in the Gaps

While the successes of the Kings and Ducks are important, NHL games cost money to attend and to watch on pay television. NHL players can be great role models, but professional athletes are generally inaccessible to the public and can be hard for young players to relate to.

This is where other hockey leagues can help. They provide further access for people to see the game played at a high level. This includes women's teams.

Women's hockey has long existed in Southern California and continues to grow at a steady rate. There are now multiple girls-only programs in the region, including the Anaheim Lady Ducks and the Los Angeles Lions Hockey Club. The Lady Ducks began in 1999, the year after the gold medal victory by the U.S. women's team at the Nagano Olympics. The LA Lions began in 2015, and now both programs are powerhouses in girls' youth hockey.

The Lady Ducks have grown from two teams in 1999 to 13 teams today, geared to different age groups and competition levels, while the Lions program has grown from one to four teams.

But girls-only hockey hasn't always been an easy option for female players in the area. Kings hockey development coordinator Tani remembers her days playing hockey in Southern California.

USC and UCLA prepare to take the ice.

"Growing up, there weren't a lot of girl's hockey teams. I had to play with the boys, so I ended up playing about half girls, half boys," she said. Tani is happy to see the recent growth. "There's just a plethora of options for girls to play here, which is awesome," she said.

The recent success of the U.S. women's national team both on the ice and at the bargaining table also helps create role models for young girls wanting to play the game.

In 2017, the team threatened to sit out the World Championships until its members received the same pay, promotion, travel accommodations, equipment, staff and per diems as the men's team. After over a year of negotiations, USA Hockey agreed to treat the women's and men's teams equally. In February, the women's team continued that success and won their second gold medal, the first since 1998.

This women's national team, however, was even more distinctive, as it featured a Southern Californian. Cayla Barnes, a defender on the team, hails from Eastvale in Riverside County. She played for the Junior Kings Bantam AAA team, the highest level of boy's hockey for that age group, as well as the Lady Ducks before she joined Team USA.

However, she had to leave her home state, for Boston College, to continue to play after high school. But what if she and other young Californians didn't have to move way for hockey?

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College Hockey

Perhaps one of the most vital steps in growing the sport of hockey for men and women in Southern California would be to add NCAA Division I teams to major universities.

Club college hockey teams from UCLA, USC and Loyola Marymount were some of the earliest groups to play hockey in Southern California. These clubs, as well as teams from many other area universities have flourished and are inspiring young fans.

"We have a lot of kids look up to us," said Travis Schwartz, a senior forward at USC. "We're one of the bigger college hockey teams in the state." The team has even motivated young players to follow in their footsteps.

Alex Altman, a senior playing for Beckman High School of the Anaheim Ducks High School Hockey League, credits the USC team as his inspiration to keep playing.

"I've been a fan of USC for about 10 years now, and I've wanted to go there since I was little," he said. "I've always been watching their games, and I thought that I could make the team."

USC Club Hockey: Universities all over Southern California and the West Coast field club hockey teams. In this photo, the University of Southern California battles the University of Washington.

Though these teams do inspire fans, they have limited visibility and do not reach the level of skill that a top-flight NCAA program can. No university in California has a varsity hockey team.

One potential blueprint could come from Arizona State University, which announced the formation of an NCAA Division I men's team in 2014 and started competing in the 2015-16 season.

ASU now plays against the best college hockey teams in the nation.

This development, combined with the emergence of Auston Matthews, one of the best American-born NHL players, has helped increase interest in Arizona. Though Matthews did not play for ASU, he was raised in nearby Scottsdale and played youth hockey there.

Since 2013-14, the season before ASU's team was announced and two seasons before Matthews was drafted first overall by the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs, the number of hockey players registered with USA Hockey in Arizona has grown by over 60 percent.

Hockey experts see huge potential for growth if USC or UCLA could someday field an NCAA Division I team, just as ASU has. Even better than one would be both because the fierce rivalry would translate well to a sport as fast and physical as hockey.

The process for this to happen has begun. The NHL and its players association are funding feasibility studies nationwide for universities interested in starting varsity hockey teams.

Five schools are participating thus far, including the University of Illinois and Oakland University in Michigan. Three other schools are participating confidentially. The powers involved in these studies would love to add teams at schools like USC and UCLA.

Kevin Westgarth, a former collegiate and Kings player and the NHL's vice president of business development and international affairs, says that both the USC-UCLA rivalry and USC's rivalries outside of the Pac-12 could be huge for the sport.

"I can only imagine how amazing it would be to see a USC-UCLA game or even Notre Dame-USC before the football game or an NHL game," he said.

Mike Snee, executive director at College Hockey Inc., which is also involved in the NHL-led studies, says the effect of having local players competing in the game could also increase interest.

"In the state of California, this year they have 43 young men out playing Division I hockey, and that places it eighth in the country," Snee said. "I would imagine this number … would grow regularly and will explode if we're able to get more Arizona States out there. If we were able to get a USC, UCLA, Stanford … I think you would see that number have a much more noticeable growth spurt."

Westgarth said that model has worked for the NHL in other areas of the U.S. and in foreign countries.

"The best secret sauce we tend to have for selling our game is making players identifiable for those fans in an area that we're targeting," he said. "When we send a team to Germany, the goal is certainly to have a German player who makes an impact, not only in their home country, but in the NHL as well."

He believes the same effect would be possible with a future California-raised player playing at a California school.

Seeing a player who grew up in Southern California star for a school like USC could have a dramatic effect. Think Reggie Bush or Sam Darnold on skates.

Unfortunately for hopeful fans, it appears that USC and UCLA either are not involved in the NHL-led studies or are participating confidentially.

Snee wants to protect the confidentiality of the schools that requested it; Westgarth says that USC and UCLA are not yet involved.

As recently as November, Tim Tessalone, a USC sports information director, said, "There are currently no plans to add any new sports under the athletic department umbrella."

If a Southern California school did want to add a team, the biggest consideration would be cost and the resulting need for fundraising. Arizona State and Penn State, which also recently added a Division I team, received massive donations to start their programs.

Arizona State received $32 million in donations for the hockey team and will move to a brand-new arena in Tempe that is part of a project set to cost $160 million. Penn State received $102 million from donor Terry Pegula, who owns the NHL's Buffalo Sabres and, with his wife, the NFL's Buffalo Bills. This included money to build a new rink and to fund both a men's and a women's program.

Building a rink would be the most important factor in the introduction of varsity hockey at USC or UCLA. Their arenas would need to be near campus to enable students to attend and thus increase revenue, like the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Galen Center, both near USC's main campus.

The rinks where the Trojans and Bruins club teams currently play are more than 10 miles from each campus and are not fit for varsity programs. The teams cannot play regularly at the Staples Center, which already houses three professional sports teams and frequent concerts, not to mention that it is too big.

At USC and UCLA, the only options would be to retrofit the Galen Center and Pauley Pavilion, respectively, or to build a new arena close to campus. The real estate value alone for such large buildings would be far greater in LA than in Tempe, Arizona, or State College, Pennsylvania.

The first step to overcoming this obstacle would be money from wealthy donors. This is not impossible for schools like USC and UCLA, both of which have alumni who could easily afford it. They just need to fall in love with hockey.

Unfortunately, even if enough money were to be raised for construction of a new rink, school administrations may be hesitant to accept a project because of the previously mentioned overhead costs to maintain an ice arena. Stanford rejected a 2013 proposal for the construction of an on-campus ice rink citing lack of space and expensive maintenance costs.

For those of us who already love the sport, like Daryl Evans, pursuing the growth of the sport, from youth to college for boys and girls, men and women, is vital to maintaining and even deepening hockey's status in Southern California.

"As long as the Olympic programs and USA Hockey continue to keep pushing," he said, "we'll be right on board with them."