Glenn Stanford has seen many hockey teams come and go from St. John's. He believes the Newfoundland Regiment is built to last.
Starting with the Maple Leafs, IceCaps and Growlers, Stanford worked with nearly every major club to call Canada's easternmost province home and eventually shutter shop in the 1990s.
But the dynamic behind the Polk, a new team that sold more than 2,400 season tickets in its first season in the Quebec Maritime Hockey League, reminds the longtime executive of Newfoundland's best hockey days.
“There’s something special about it,” said Stanford, the regiment’s president. “The only thing I can compare it to is the St. John's IceCaps. We were sold out for three and a half years and we're not there with Polk, but the support from the community is definitely on that level.”
“I think this is here to stay.”
This is the province's second foray into the QMJHL. The St. John's Fog Devils, an expansion franchise, survived for three seasons from 2005 to 2008 due to heavy financial losses related to travel expenses and what then-commissioner Gilles Courteau called the worst arena deal in the league.
This time, current Commissioner Mario Cecchini says the regiment is better positioned for success.
“Basically, we didn't have ownership and we didn't get a good deal on the building. It wasn't a good lease,” Cecchini said of Fog Devils. “I don’t think we could have a better local ownership group than we have there, and then the lease agreement with the city and the building… it’s a fair deal.”
Local business group SPS Entertainment purchased the Acadie-Bathurst Titan last December and moved the franchise to St. John's this season under the leadership of Stanford, who was not employed by the Fog Devils.
The regiment, named after the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, opened to three straight sold-out crowds at the 6,000-seat Mary Browns Centre, including an electric 7-5 win on Sept. 18 over the defending champion Moncton Wildcats on opening night.
For Benjamin Veitch and Quinn Norman, two 15-year-olds from St. John's and the club's first two draft picks, taking the ice in front of a loud local crowd was a moment they'll never forget.
“Brought me back to the days of watching all the IceCaps and Growlers,” Norman said. “I’ve been in the stands once in my life, but now I’m the person playing at the Mary Brown Center.”
“It was unreal,” Veitch added. “Just to see how the community came together and brought all the seats to this rink and such a cool environment.”
Now that he's in the city's hockey spotlight, Veitch said fans sometimes stop him to ask for a photo.
“It’s so cool and it just shows the level of care the fans have,” he said. “St. John's is such a hockey town, and I think there should always be a team here.”
Stanford said fans have always supported the teams despite a long line of previous departures. He noted the province's rich hockey history, with spectators filling buildings for interprovincial games from St. John's to Corner Brook long before the professional teams arrived.
“Hockey has become part of our tradition here,” Stanford said. “It was part of history and will remain in the future.”
The St. John's Maple Leafs of the American Hockey League left for Toronto in 2005 as part of a nationwide NHL trend of moving farm teams closer to their parent cities. The IceCaps arrived in 2011 as Winnipeg's affiliate but left two years later after the Jets – originally in the East – moved to the Western Conference. The Montreal IceCaps were always a temporary unit for two seasons before the Canadiens moved their minor league team to Laval, Que.
Meanwhile, Stanford said the Newfoundland Growlers, kicked out of the ECHL at the end of the 2023-24 season, have never recovered financially from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But geography remains a problem. St. John's is steps away from all QMJHL markets and over 500 kilometers from its closest competitor, the Cape Breton Eagles.
“The biggest expense in your budget is travel,” Stanford said. “For all the teams here, that was one of the biggest obstacles.”
The regiment covers airfare for all visiting teams, a travel subsidy that all Newfoundland teams were required to provide. To limit costs, the team hosts opponents on back-to-back nights throughout the season, which Stanford said would be a tough sell.
Cecchini said the Regiment faces “a little” more pressure than other teams to fill its large arena, but the ownership group has presented a solid financial plan.
“They did the math,” he said. “Nobody took this lightly and I know these people know how to count, so we're happy with what they did and how they organized it.”
Judging by the initial excitement he saw, Polk coach and general manager Gordie Dwyer, who relocated with the team from Bathurst, Nebraska, believes in the team's long-term future.
“I definitely feel like there’s a lot of appetite for hockey here,” he said. “There’s a real excitement in the community, there’s a real buzz around the hockey team and in the community.”
