Dunwoody’s Mark Greenbaum was an original Thrashers fan, jumping on that undermanned bandwagon/Zamboni from the first puck drop of 1999.
He and his buddy Richard Kovlitz were among the most faithful acolytes of hockey in Atlanta, sticking with the local NHL team through each 10th-or-worse conference finish. (The team did make the playoffs once after winning its division in 2007.)
And this was their reward: They got sent down to the minors this season.
The two of them had a row to themselves Thursday near center ice at Gwinnett Arena as the ECHL’s conference-leading Gladiators took care of the Florida Everblades in a shootout. They and 2,600 of their friends, jonesing for a hit of Yankee flatball, were getting by for another night.
“It’s fine. Whaddya going to do?” Greenbaum said. “I’m a hockey freak, and this is hockey. It’s the only thing in town.”
With the Thrashers bolting for Winnipeg, it has fallen to the Class AA-level Gwinnett Gladiators to carry on the difficult fight for the hearts and minds of fans in the City to Busy to Skate.
Atlanta’s present-day pros play a brand that is a step slower and a touch sloppier than that practiced by the NHL. No one is trying to pretend differently. To win a crowd, teams like the Gladiators have to make up in spunk what they lack in native physical gifts.
Someone in the seats has noticed. “These guys work their tails off — the sad part is the vast majority of them will never wear an NHL sweater,” Kovlitz said. With a shift more toward player development, the league has made some strides on that front. Since 2002, 292 players with ECHL roots have reached the NHL, if only for a cup of hot chocolate. But the numbers still suggest it is a Snake River Canyon-type jump from this league to the bigs.
With hockey at this level, you get earnest effort from anonymous sources. Take for instance 27-year-old Andy Brandt. Thursday, he played his 265th game as a Gladiator, a record for service that is certainly a mixed blessing.
“Obviously, you don’t strive to play your whole career in the East Coast League. You want to move up,” he said.
But: “It’s an accomplishment that I’m pretty proud of, just to be able to play and keep my body in shape in order to keep playing.”
You get a hungry hockey, the kind played by those who want something more. “I walk into that dressing room on almost a nightly basis and I’m inspired by the way that team plays,” Gladiators coach John Wroblewski said.
Throw in a Vienna sausage-eating contest at the first intermission, the puck chuck at the second (where fans hurl orange discs over the glass in an attempt to land them exactly mid-rink), and you have pro hockey in Atlanta.
This much Greenbaum has going for him now — he is at least a little heavier in the wallet. A comparable seat to the $17 one he occupied Thursday night would have cost him $92 at Philips. “Plus free parking here,” he added.
The Gladiators co-existed with the Thrashers after moving here in 2003 from Mobile. Originally a handy minor league affiliate for the Thrashers, the Gladiators now serve both the Phoenix Coyotes and Buffalo Sabres.
They have faced a challenge like that of the Gwinnett Braves, being a minor league team in search of a niche in a major league city.
Attendance for both Gwinnett franchises averages about 5,000, peaking on the weekends and dipping during the work week when the commute north is most daunting. Last Saturday, with the help of a jersey promotion, the Gladiators went over 10,000 at the gate.
“[The G-Braves] live for the weekends, and we live for the weekends here,” Gladiators president and general manager Steve Chapman said. “It’s virtually identical.”
The impact of the Thrashers exodus on the Gladiators bottom line has been barely measurable. Chapman noticed a little bump in season-ticket sales, although overall average attendance figures have yet to move significantly. Gwinnett ranks fifth in the 20-team ECHL in average attendance, 5,037.
Management would love to draw in more people like the Cawstons of Woodstock. Rick and Renee and their three kids were former regular Thrashers customers who ventured out for their first Gladiators game Thursday night.
“Not bad,” was Rick’s review. “There is a noticeable difference in the speed and skill of the players, but it was a good game to watch. And I was impressed by the passion of the few fans who were there.”
By the time they were leaving the arena, 9-year-old son Ricky, the member of the family most disturbed by the loss of the Thrashers, was campaigning for a new Gladiators jersey. “In the eyes of a kid, it’s all the same thing — it’s professional hockey,” Rick said.
As a bonus, the Gladiators are playing well these days. Despite losing their front-line goaltender, Jeff Jakaitis, to a season-ending knee injury, they entered Saturday on a six-game winning streak. They are the league’s points leader.
Given the emphasis on player development and the inevitable movement of players between leagues, winning can’t be the only priority at this level. Rosters are too volatile to depend upon results for luring new fans.
“The thing about minor league hockey is you got to be consistent. You got to put a good product out there, show that the guys work hard. Any time you don’t do that, nobody wants to see you,” Chapman said.
He says he has made converts of a few displaced Thrashers fans. To others, he has an oft-repeated sales pitch:
“I’ll always ask them, ‘Do you love college football?’
“Of course they do. I’ll tell them, that ain’t perfect football. That’s kids learning how to get to the next level. And [relatively], this is a higher level than college football.
“This is guys trying to work their way up, and other guys trying to hang on. They’re all out there working their backsides off trying to play hard and accomplish whatever they can.”
The one thing the Gladiators can claim without fear of contradiction is that they now own a monopoly on professional hockey hereabouts.
They are, by attrition, the stewards of the game here — “We take that to heart,” Chapman said.
To the orphaned, shaken hockey fans of Atlanta, the Gladiators are a refuge. At least they will not be flitting off to Ashtabula, Anniston, Alberta or anywhere else in the near future, the GM said.
Really. He promised.
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