For local hockey fans, the announcement in January that the Anaheim Ducks were bringing their highest-level American Hockey League affiliate to San Diego was like a giant countdown clock ticking down the days until I could once again see a professional hockey team we could call our own.
That moment of truth arrived last Saturday night at the Valley View Casino Center on Sports Arena Boulevard, when I joined nearly 13,000 others who packed the building to see the newest edition of the San Diego Gulls take the ice.
And a special evening it was.
For me, it was much like attending a reunion event. Walking to my new season seats in lower-level section 7, I saw face after familiar face, and the names started flooding back in my memory. I knew immediately I wasn’t the only person who had endured the nine-year wait for the Gulls’ return. And I realized these people make up a special group, my “hockey family.”
I was struck by how much time had passed when I asked Rocky, a former goal judge, how his adorable daughter Vanessa, who was in elementary school when I last saw her, was doing.
“She’s in her second year at Cal Poly,” Rocky replied as my jaw dropped.
I went to last Saturday’s opener with a group of four friends, two of whom drove from Arizona for the game. We entered the center to see the old dame looking better than she ever has in many ways. The Ducks have made sure their next players will play in a first-class facility, installing new dasher boards, new glass and netting, a new scoreboard and, behind the scenes, refurbished locker rooms and, most important, new compressors that have the most crucial job – making the ice surface.
I offer my thanks to Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli for their faith in us and renovating our 49-year-old building.
These newest guys are clearly the best hockey players ever to don Gulls jerseys, and their skating and puck-handling skills were evident from the moment the puck was dropped.
The building erupted at 15:01 of the first period when Gulls left winger Nick Ritchie fired a rebound past the opposing goaltender for the first franchise goal. Assists went to center Mike Sgarbossa and defenseman Sean Theodore. Hockey was officially back in San Diego!
The Gulls went on to score a 4-2 victory, never trailing, behind the outstanding play of Ducks prize goaltending protegé John Gibson, who stopped 32 of 34 shots.
Going back to an earlier, simpler time in San Diego’s history, I used my new driver’s license to visit, with friends, what was once called Frontier Boulevard and see the massive hole in the ground that was to become the San Diego International Sports Arena. Later, the steel beams for the roof soared to the sky, and we thought it was hilarious when we spotted a Porta-Potty sitting by itself atop the girders!
A year and $6.4 million later, the building opened its doors on Nov. 17, 1966, when the first San Diego Gulls franchise took the ice and immediately endeared itself to more than 11,000 San Diegans, including myself.
Having just begun my senior year at Point Loma High School, I went with several buddies and handed over $1.50 for a seat in the upper-level-end seats. Not sure of the rules and unique traditions of this new sport, we were still immediately hooked by the speed and grace of these athletes and didn’t miss more than a handful of games the rest of that inaugural season.
Since then, I have held season tickets in the same section to every franchise that called the arena home.
I was 17 years old back then when the arena opened, and recently, as a 66-year-old, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see the great game of hockey return.
With the most recent Gulls franchise suspending operations in 2005, local hockey fans endured years of rumors about another team locating here. But the rumors were exactly that. Until January, when that countdown began.
Tick… tick… tick.