The St. Albert Steel’s Drive for Five appears to be spinning its wheels.
The Alberta Junior Hockey League club launched a campaign on June 20 to reach a goal of selling 500 season tickets for the upcoming 2011-2012 season. However, nearly three weeks in, the numbers are not looking promising, with only 65 sold.
“When you look back at our first season, we were sitting at about 250 at this point,” said Steel head coach and general manager Greg Parks. “It’s a little bit disappointing, but we still have a ways to go yet.”
In their inaugural season of 2007-2008, the Steel had 454 season ticket holders. But that number has steadily dropped each year since, bottoming out at just 117 last season.
The Steel hope to target local businesses to reach their goal of 500, teaming with the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce to reach their members.
“I believe there’s more than 3,000 members in the chamber, so even if we get a handful of those to step up and support the Steel, we’ll be in good shape,” Parks said.
While Parks is optimistic, he added that without support from the community, the Steel’s days in town may be numbered.
“We don’t want to leave St. Albert. That’s not our goal by any means. We want to make it work in St. Albert,” he said.
“Going back to our first year, with 450 season tickets holders, that’s pretty much where you budget to break even and we’ve been on a steady decline ever since,” he added. “It’s not to figure out that it doesn’t work.”
Since moving from Fort Saskatchewan in 2007, the Steel have not fared well, posting only one winning regular season (2008-2009) while playing in Servus Credit Union Place and bowing out in the first round of the AJHL playoffs in four straight years.
Some might argue that the team’s lack of success on the ice has a lot to do with lagging attendance, but Parks believes it’s not that easy.
“I think that’s an easy argument for a lot of people,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the Spruce Grove Saints, who were No. 1 in the country last year for about 95 per cent of the year and their attendance in the regular season went down.”
Still, he said he realizes another way to get people out to games is to have more local talent on the team, and has started moving in that direction with the hiring of assistant coaches Wes Werhun and Donovan Sugiyama, and the acquisition of defenceman Kyle Scaber from the Sherwood Park Crusaders.
Steel brass went before St. Albert city council during last year’s budget deliberations, asking for a grant of $125,000 a year for the next 10 years.
While that request wasn’t approved, the city is working to negotiate with the team on ice times and rates, sponsorship and advertising agreements and the repayment of dressing room construction costs.
“That hasn’t been going as well as we would have hoped. The way things are structured now, it’s just not possible to operate a junior A team with the lease agreement we have,” Parks said.
The Steel’s current agreement with the city expires in 2012.
Adult season tickets are $299 each and are good for all 30 Steel home games this season. Student and senior season tickets are $229 and $179 for children under 17.
For more information, check out www.steelhockey.ca.
