There were no players on the ice, heck there wasn't even ice, but the Prince George Cougars attracted about 1,500 fans Tuesday afternoon to CN Centre.
That's more than bothered to show up on most nights this past season to actually watch a hockey game, as opposed to sitting in the dark for more than an hour to listen to speeches from the new owners of the Western Hockey League team.
And it wasn't just the free hot dogs coming off the barbecue outside that drew Cougars fans out on a weekday.
They were there to cheer for their team.
They started chanting "Let's go, Cougars!" five minutes before the proceedings began.
By the time CN Centre manager Glen Mikkelsen stepped into the lights to welcome everyone, Rowdy Cat, the team's mascot, had the crowd doing the wave.
They greeted new managing partner/team president Greg Pocock with a standing ovation and gave Cougars legend and minority owner Dan Hamhuis the exact same welcome.
There was so much good will from the crowd that even Mark Holick, the team's head coach last year, got a standing O when he was called up to the stage.
WHL commissioner Ron Robison was also on hand Tuesday, after having presented the league championship trophy to the Edmonton Oil Kings in Portland the night before.
He showered praise on Prince George and its hockey fans for supporting the Cougars for the past 20 years. He then complimented the new ownership group and, in true hockey fashion, also delivered a well-placed elbow to the back of the head of the team's previous owners.
"[The new owners] will operate the team in a much more professional manner," Robsion told the crowd.
The entire event, from the number of people who attended to the electric atmosphere in the room when minority owner and former Cougar Eric Brewer appeared in a video message, clearly demonstrated how much Prince George hockey fans still love their Cougars and how much they despised the Brodsky family.
Not one person thanked Rick Brodsky for bringing the team to Prince George from Victoria 20 years ago. No one thanked Brodsky and his family for their efforts to put a winning team on the ice and the fantastic players they brought to Prince George - Brewer, Hamhuis, Zdeno Chara (Stanley Cup champion), Dustin Byfuglien (Stanley Cup champion), Devin Setoguchi, Trent Hunter and Derek Boogaard, to name a few.
Brodsky didn't ask just anybody to buy the Cougars. Instead, he approached a local guy in Pocock who he knew was passionate about the team and about Prince George.
The glory days and great traditions the team's new business manager Andy Beesley wants to bring back are the traditions and the glory days that happened under Brodsky's ownership.
There's no doubt Brodsky and his family squandered those precious moments away, their hubris blinding them to how fleeting those moments are and how difficult they are to bring back once they're gone. They burned relationships right up until the very end and they won't be missed, neither by the fans nor by the league.
Into this void step Pocock and his partners. There was more than just talk Tuesday about a "new ice age" and building a championship team and a first-class hockey operation. Hamhuis told the crowd how he called the players chosen by the Cougars in this year's bantam draft. Pocock said that Brewer has been meeting with the senior leadership of the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise he plays for, asking them for their insight on how they built a successful organization (and Stanley Cup winner) in central Florida. In other words, Brewer and Hamhuis are engaged team owners, want the Cougars to succeed as much as Pocock and the other owners do and will contribute as much as possible to make that happen.
Their enthusiasm in the Cougars and the future was matched by the crowd. In the end, everyone wants the same thing: a Cougars team that makes Prince George proud.
If Tuesday was any indication, both the energetic owners and the excited fans are convinced those better days are on the horizon and approaching fast.
Can't wait to be part of it.
