Thunder may roll away from Delaware
The hockey team has lost its lease, but fans vow to change the state fair board's mind.
I’ve pretty much kept away from sports on this side of my Substack since I talk about baseball on my sister site, The Knothole. But this is a story that transcends sports since, in their short four-year history, the Delaware Thunder minor league hockey team has ingrained themselves into local culture despite a horrific overall record on the ice - as of this writing, they’re last in the Federal Prospects Hockey League with a 6-40-3 record and are one of two teams who won’t make their postseason. Earlier this season they suffered what was billed as a professional hockey record 28-game losing streak.
But the fans have come out nonetheless, regularly selling out the 700-seat Centre Ice Arena at the Harrington state fairgrounds. Through last weekend’s games, the Thunder was last in the league in attendance but they play in the FPHL’s smallest arena, less than half the size of its closest cousin in Watertown, New York. (Watertown’s team is next-to-last, averaging 805 patrons a game for a middling squad.) It’s likely Delaware would draw at least 1,000 a game in a larger arena.
In a bout of insomnia after hearing this news late Monday night, I sketched out what I thought were three possible options:
Expand the current arena to the north so that seating could be built at the end, and raise the roof to allow for a suspended center-ice scoreboard, with an alternate scorebord on the press box for youth hockey. But while it keeps the team at the location, they would certainly have to take a one-season hiatus and it’s not much of a gain for significant cost, maybe 300 seats at most.
The second option would be a relocation option, somewhat similar to what played out in yesterday’s press conference but in a different direction. If they could extend the Harrington lease one more year, it would likely give the time needed for the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center in Salisbury, Maryland to do the renovations needed for hockey - renovations they contemplated a few years ago. Of course, while it brings the team a little closer for me it means the team would leave Delaware, which sort of defeats the purpose and gives the team a lame duck season.
The last option is what may well be the case, as the team announced yesterday there were preliminary discussions of building a new arena in Dover. However, they would need at least two more seasons at the Harrington facility to plan and build a new arena, which ideally (to me) would seat about 2,000 or so. I would have thought it better to move closer to the population base in Sussex County by putting up a facility in the Milton area, but Dover is another significant center of population. It may not seem like it, but this end of Delmarva is sneaky big - there are 100,000 in Wicomico County (mainly in and around Salisbury) and 200,000 in Sussex who mainly live east of U.S. 113.
The problem with Harrington is more than a fair board director that doesn’t want to play ball, to mix metaphors. Having hockey in that town is a lot like having the old Richfield Coliseum where the Cleveland Cavaliers used to play - it was centered on the Northeast Ohio market but situated 45 minutes away from anywhere, in the middle of a rural area. That’s why there is no Richfield Coliseum anymore.
Obviously the state fair is a big draw in and of itself, but it’s created a niche that one would think the Fair Board would embrace as it brings people 28 nights every winter when the fair is on hiatus. But they seem to believe that the Thunder takes up time from youth programs, which is hard for me to believe. And there are 2,500 fans (and counting) who believe they should have a say as well.
I’ll follow along and see what happens, but there may be a void in the Delaware sports scene next winter unless the Fair Board and team come to an agreement to extend their lease.