INSIDE HOCKEY

The handwringing over the financial fate of the NHL Phoenix Coyotes in 2009 has overshadowed a sad, quiet end to Arizona’s first professional sports team. Today the Phoenix RoadRunners hockey franchise folds, yet again – for the third time in its 42 year history.

The first RoadRunners came to the Valley of The Sun as a minor league Western Hockey League franchise, skating from 1967 to 1974 while gathering two Lester Patrick championship trophies (for 1972-73 and 1973-74).

And remember this, kids: the first major league hockey team in Phoenix was not the NHL Coyotes, but instead the World Hockey Association RoadRunners of 1974-1977, who played at the (then) fancy Veterans Memorial at the Fairgrounds near downtown. I loved those RoadRunners, with their distinctive bird named Rocky on their cool blue jerseys (a legendary logo that would remain very similar for their entire history).

But being a pioneer of Sunbelt hockey was deadly, and the WHA RoadRunners simply could not keep up with a major league financial pace. After three seasons playing at the top (and enjoying the WHA sunshine hockey spotlight with the San Diego Mariners), the RoadRunners retreated back to the minors.

First up was a start in the 1977-78 season as a Central Hockey League entry – but they jumped mid-year and finished the season in the Pacific Hockey League. They lasted one more year in the PHL, and the RoadRunners folded for the first time as that league did at the end of 1978-79. That first time around, The RoadRunners lasted through 12 seasons and four different leagues.

The explosion of teams in the new International Hockey League of the 1980s included a revived RoadRunners from 1989-1997, but as the financial glut of that league caught up with itself, so the RoadRunners folded for a second time with the arrival of the – wait for it – NHL Phoenix Coyotes.

Once the Coyotes moved from downtown Phoenix to their own building in far-west Glendale in 2003, the NBA Suns figured they could fill 40 or so dates at their US Airways Centre with their own minor league hockey team: The 2005 Phoenix RoadRunners.

Phoenix had become so large, and rush-hour driving so slow, that much of the city had great difficulty driving from home to Glendale in time to catch a Coyotes game, so the Suns’ ownership surmised that half of the huge city would settle for a shorter drive downtown to take in minor league hockey at much lower prices. The idea did work to bring in curious spectators who looked at the outing as something similar to going to the movies – but it did not attract enough hardcore hockey fans. The atmosphere surrounding these latest RoadRunners was only an echo of past glories, and they never seemed to etch their own identity in the Phoenix marketplace.

And so, eliminated from this year’s playoffs, the Phoenix RoadRunners will tonight (April 4, 2009) play their last game, on the road in Idaho. Four years of ECHL hockey behind them, I doubt that the glorious Arizona hockey bird will rise again from the flames of financial defeat in Phoenix. And that makes me so very sad.

Revived, survived and once again died. I will miss, again and again, the Phoenix Roadrunners. Rest in peace, beautiful bird.