Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993 TAG: 9304180097
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HOCKEY MAKING A FRESH START IN ROANOKE
Perhaps it's marketing a new hue. Perhaps it's an attempt to put more than the distance from Vinton to downtown Roanoke between hockey's past and future in the Roanoke Valley.Certainly, however, it's symbolism. The chosen uniform colors of the Roanoke Whatevers, who hope to bring the East Coast Hockey League to 20 teams soon, are black and green.
Before this planned franchise gets a nickname, a coach, a needed NHL affiliation or even an introductory news conference Wednesday at the Roanoke Civic Center, those colors state how this club must play.
It must spend money to make money - or pro hockey here is likely in the deep freeze forever.
Different people keep writing chapters to the local ice capades, and John Gagnon is the newest author. He's a Quebec native and the owner of an Alleghany County trucking company, CAT Inc.
As a youth, he was so good at hockey, he became a skier. However, Gagnon already has scored on his first power-play opportunity. When he first spoke to Roanoke Civic Center officials about his ECHL hopes, it would be fair to say they were less thrilled about playing host to a hockey team than to a Guns N' Roses concert.
Why shouldn't it have seemed a gratefully dead idea? There have been so many frozen franchises here over the past two decades, Roanoke Valley hockey could have melted the polar ice cap.
When the civic center and Gagnon started negotiating, he might as well have been in his native Thetford Mines, the sides were so far apart. It took a while, but Gagnon had closed the distance to Daleville, where he lives.
He wasn't working alone. Pierre Paiement, one of two Rebels with a restaurant, presented an impressive menu to the civic center. City councilman Delvis "Mac" McCadden and Vern Danielsen, the chairman of the civic center commissioner were pro-pro hockey, too.
Civic center manager Bob Chapman said he finally began to ask himself why, if the ECHL had been so successful in other Southern markets, it couldn't work here. Chapman also said he was pleased that every time he or Gagnon made a line change, it was done behind closed doors and not on these pages.
No, Gagnon isn't amazed that the civic center isn't about to become an 8,363-seat hockey home for the first time since 1975-76. The civic center was the only igloo he considered. If the ECHL was going to stay here, it would be in Roanoke - and the team's name will reflect that, he says. No more valley icemen will cometh.
What stunned him, when he moved to the area from Montreal five years ago, was that they were paying people to play on frozen ponds in these parts. What surprised him was that, after planning to stay in Virginia for only a few months to enhance the management of one of his businesses, he stayed.
Gagnon has been a regular at the Lancers, Rebels and Rampage games since. He will be the new club's president and CEO, but he won't manage the operation. He doesn't have time to be a rink rat.
Gagnon, 40, owns five businesses, including Canadian American Transportation in Low Moor. He employs 210 in two nations, with a payroll that will grow after the ECHL awards the franchise in a couple of weeks. Last year, his companies had revenues of $26 million, or a whole lot of hockey pucks - which wholesale for 45 cents.
He's a husband, a father, a skier, a golfer, a traveler. He knows hockey, too, and not just because he was astute enough to decide Bobby Orr was his favorite player.
Growing up in his hometown south of Quebec City, Gagnon learned how a hockey club works through one of his father's buddies, who owned the Thetford Mines Canadiens of the Quebec Junior A League.
He worked for the club and became friends with players who went on to the NHL - like goalie Rogie Vachon, winger Marc Tardif and center Gilbert Perreault. Years, miles and millions of dollars later, he was in Los Angeles last week, discussing his new venture with the Los Angeles Kings' general manager - Vachon.
The newest Roanoke puckmeister said the club must average "a little more than 3,000" fans to make a profit. "I can honestly say we will sell more than 2,000 tickets," he said. "We already have 1,400 commitments."
The Rampage averaged only 1,439, an ECHL record low, at the LancerLot this winter. Gagnon said that when he first saw the Roanoke Civic Center several years ago, he wondered why it wasn't hockey's home here.
Now, he will try to answer his own historical question.