ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610150035
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
THE 30-YEAR HISTORY of hockey in the Roanoke Valley is full of memorable events and characters.
Thirty years ago, there was no civic center in the Roanoke Valley, let alone two.
Because of that, there could be no hockey team.
During the winter of 1966-67, that all changed. Construction began on the Salem-Roanoke Valley Civic Center - a name later shortened to Salem Civic Center - and a local business group secured franchise rights for a minor-league hockey team that would begin play the next winter.
During the course of the upcoming East Coast Hockey League season, the 30th anniversary of the birth of that franchise will pass. Some local hockey boosters already are planning a 30th anniversary celebration for the 1997-98 season.
More than once it was asked whether hockey could survive in Roanoke.
The 1960s
Tom Anderton just celebrated his 84th birthday. He still works most everyday with his sons in the family business, an industrial uniform company in downtown Roanoke. Rarely does he go to hockey games these days because he spends his winters in Florida.
But 30 years ago, Anderton was one of the leaders in securing the Roanoke Valley's first professional hockey franchise. He was a member of the Salem Athletic Club, one of the directors of the Salem Pirates minor-league baseball club and a member of the Salem-Roanoke Valley Civic Center Commission.
``We were building a civic center and didn't have anything to put in it,'' he said. ``We [the Salem Athletic Club members] saw the Washington Redskins play and later went to a hockey game. Somebody said they'd give us $25,000 if we bought a hockey team. They never did, but we went to Minneapolis and bought the equipment to make the ice.''
The group, which also included Ralph Richardson, Jack Dame (who later became the civic center manager) and judge James Moyer, was awarded an Eastern League franchise early in winter of 1966-67. The team was named the Salem Rebels and would play in Salem for most of the next 10 seasons.
The first game was played Oct.24, 1967, at the civic center in front of about 2,000 spectators. The Rebels beat Jacksonville 3-1, one of only 11 victories for that first club.
Thirty years ago, there were few hockey-literate fans in the Roanoke Valley. A mass campaign to educate the locals about this foreign import was undertaken. A local television station aired short public service announcements aimed at teaching the populace about hockey.
The team had a small, loyal following composed chiefly of workers at the local General Electric plant who had been transferred here from the North. No one in Salem knew how to drive the Zamboni, the ice-resurfacing machine, until a Canadian worker from the team's training camp in Niagara Falls, Ontario, drove down to help.
The first two Salem Rebels teams were rather nondescript. By 1970, they were playoff-caliber.
The 1970s
The '70s truly were the best and worst of times. The early part of the decade was dominated by exciting teams and a league championship. From 1976-80, though, the Valley didn't even have a team.
Gene Hawthorne and Henry Brabham joined the team's board of directors in the early '70s. In 1973, Hawthorne helped get the team into the Roanoke Civic Center, which had opened two years earlier. Colin Kilburn was hired as coach, and by 1970 the team was in the playoffs. With Kilburn as general manager, the Roanoke Valley Rebels won the Southern League championship in 1974 by beating Charlotte four games to one.
Kilburn, who died in 1995, was one of the true characters of Roanoke Valley hockey. He became a local legend Nov.20, 1970, when he left the bench, squeezed into goalie pads (he was described in The Roanoke Times as ``short, heavy and out of shape'') and helped the Rebels beat Jacksonville 6-4. Another time, he took a tomahawk chop at a player who had skated by the bench and punched him in the nose.
The 1973-74 Rebels were led by Mike Keenan (who coached the New York Rangers to the 1994 Stanley Cup championship), Claude Piche, Wayne Mosdell, Denis Meloche and Pierre Paiement, now the general manager of the Roanoke Express.
It was the era of minor-league hockey that inspired the movie ``Slapshot'' - fights, cheap shots and chicken-wire-enclosed rinks.
It was tougher off the ice. Revenues were low. After a couple of lackluster seasons, the club was out of money. The Rebels operated on a shoestring budget through 1975-76. By August 1976, Roanoke's first ice age was over.
The 1980s
The man who oversaw the demise of hockey in 1976 would emerge as the singular figure of Roanoke Valley hockey when it returned in the 1980s. There had been no one like Henry Brabham on the local sports scene. There probably never will be.
``I guess I was sort of a character,'' said Brabham, the Vinton petroleum magnate who had become a part-owner of the Roanoke Valley Rebels in the early 1970s and stayed on until the team folded in '76.
It is not an overstatement to say Brabham saved Roanoke Valley hockey. Repeatedly, he would save teams and entire leagues with the force of his will and the depth of his pockets. He built his own rink and named it the LancerLot after his own chain of Lancer markets. The team, too, was called the Lancers at one point.
``It was one league after another,'' Brabham said.
In 1980, Jack Dame, who had been part of the original ownership group in 1967, and Bob Payne took over the Utica (N.Y.) Mohawks, a struggling franchise in the financially strapped Eastern League, which went under in 1981.
The Raiders wound up in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League and later were purchased by Donald ``Whitey'' Taylor and his brother Danny. The ACHL was a vicious league. Just as in the old Eastern League days, brawls were common. Players were known to go after officials and fans, in addition to each other.
Brabham once pulled an opposing coach off the Plexiglas when the coach was going after some fans.
Then-Raiders coach Pat Kelly, who later became commissioner of the East Coast Hockey League, told Brabham: ``Those boys would have killed you.''
``But I survived,'' Brabham said.
Tired of negotiating leases with the Salem Civic Center Commission, Brabham offered to buy the civic center for $1 million in 1983, but was rebuffed. He folded the Raiders, then moved the ACHL's debt-ridden Nashville (Tenn.) franchise to Salem in December 1983 and changed the name to the Virginia Lancers.
The LancerLot was built in Vinton for $3.2 million and opened Nov.29, 1984, with 1,548 fans there to see the Lancers beat Pine Bridge (N.C.) 5-3.
The LancerLot was home to as many shenanigans off the ice as on it. Once, a local fan padlocked the officials in their dressing room between periods. ``We had to use a bolt-cutter to get 'em out,'' Brabham said.
The Lancers, led by coach John Tortorella and players Pete DeArmas and Serge Roberge, won the last ACHL championship in 1987. When that league failed, the Lancers and Winston-Salem latched on with the All America league, which was made up mostly of teams from the Midwest.
During the 1987-88 season, Brabham found himself helping pay other teams' travel expenses. Brabham was so displeased with the quality of the All America league, he once berated an opposing coach for putting such a lousy product on the ice. That league's demise led to Brabham forming a league of his own - the ECHL.
When the league took the ice in 1988-89 with five teams, Brabham owned three of them (Virginia, Erie and Johnstown) and held the lease agreement for a fourth (Knoxville).
The 1990s
Brabham got out of hockey in the early '90s, but Roanoke Valley teams continued to play at the LancerLot. At least until March 13, 1993, when the star-crossed Roanoke Valley Rampage played the last home game of a disastrous 14-49-1 season.
That night, 16 inches of snow fell in the valley during the ``Blizzard of the Century.'' Sixty-three brave fans had to be evacuated when the building's roof began to crumple. The roof then caved in, figuratively and literally, on Roanoke Valley hockey. A few days later, team owner Larry Revo - who ran the club on a minuscule budget - announced he was moving the franchise to Huntsville, Ala.
Almost immediately, a group led by Paiement and John Gagnon, owner of a trucking company, stepped in with a plan to put an ECHL franchise in the Roanoke Civic Center. Scoffed at initially, the group's effort gained momentum. In May 1993, the ECHL - with some prodding from Brabham - awarded the group a franchise and told the new owners this was ``Roanoke's last chance.''
Since then, the Roanoke Express has played before record crowds and has made the playoffs three consecutive years under coach Frank Anzalone. Last season, the club averaged 5,679 fans per game, a total that would have been unheard of 30 years ago.
If those numbers continue, then perhaps this truly is Roanoke's last chance. It may not need another.
LENGTH: Long : 161 linesby CNB