Andy Beesley stayed close to home most of the time while the Prince George Cougars were playing their abbreviated 22-game schedule and for that he was thankful.
As the Cougars vice-president of business, as much as he would have liked to have been there to see the team play live, he’s relieved he could avoid what team captain Jack Sander said was somewhat like a two-month prison sentence, confined to quarters in the rink and in their hotel rooms.
Planning for the 2021 season essentially started more than a year ago when the 22-team Western Hockey League was shut down with the first COVID-19 outbreaks in March 2020. The second wave of the virus in late-summer scrapped training camps before they began at their usual time of year and each month the WHL’s return-to-play committee had to adjust its sights and delay the start of the season until finally, on Feb. 26, the puck dropped on the first games in the Central Division hub.
“Nobody had ever done this before, in our world anyway, and it was really making everything up from scratch, but the amount of work was profound behind the scenes,” said Beesley,” all the way from the big-picture discussions and the governors trying to wrap their heads around what it is we’re going to do and why we’re doing this and how much it’s going to cost.
“There was that and working with health authorities and at the other end of the spectrum it was the amount of fine details that were just overwhelming to start off. One tiny example of that is because of COVID regulations our broadcaster Fraser (Rodgers) couldn’t be up in the normal booth because it wasn’t part of the protected bubble and they had to create a new spot for him. So something as simple as getting an extension cord and hooking up an Ethernet cable, it might sound simple but it’s not, because it’s a concrete building with a lot of walls and it required a great deal of planning and hand-wringing.”
The Cougars went into quarantine before they left for Kamloops and upon their arrival. Players and staff were subjected to weekly testing for the virus but there were no positive tests the entire time they were there. Beesley says that’s a testament to the willingness of the players to make sacrifices and follow the rules, knowing what was at stake if they strayed from health protocols.
“They were remarkably good for a bunch of teenaged boys who are being locked up for a couple of months and from the coaching staff on down, everybody was remarkably excellent at following the rules precisely and realizing it’s not kid stuff we’re talking about we’re talking about here,” said Beesley.
“The chances of catching this wretched virus and getting really sick from it and infecting your teammates was really on everybody’s mind. Everybody realized this was potentially life or death business. People are getting sick (from COVID) and in some cases dying and they can’t see their loved ones or their aging parents. Our players understood that they were extraordinarily privileged to be down there playing hockey and that’s one of the reasons they treated it so well and were not breaking rules.”
The WHL learned a lot from observing how the NHL playoff bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton were handled and applied many of the same protocols in the five WHL hubs.
“We have to give a huge amount of credit to Kamloops, in our case, and I know Kelowna was the same - the arena staff and team staff really knocked it out of the park in terms of how they organized things to keep everybody safe,” said Beesley. “They were really serious about not breaking the rules and sticking to your own areas and making it obvious what those areas were.”
Despite getting reduced rates from the Sandman Signature Hotel , which is owned by Kamloops Blazers/Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi, the Cougars ownership group had to cover the cost of feeding and housing 25 players for 60 days in a hotel and paying for COVID tests, despite having way to recoup that money through ticket sales, sponsorships or advertising. On top of the bill for the team’s extended stay the Cougars owners also had to cover the cost of sticks, skate blades and player scholarships.
“It was a shocking amount of money that this cost the owners,” said Beesley. “ It was many hundreds of thousands of dollars per team.”
Beesley rented a truck and trailer and drove to Kamloops to pick up the players’ hockey gear, sticks, stationery bikes, exercise equipment, the skate sharpener, training staff tools, broadcaster consoles and all the other supplies the Cougars needed for their two months in the B.C. Division hub.
The Cats finished fourth in the B.C. Division with a 9-10-2-1 record and had there been a postseason they would have been in a playoff position, as the highest-ranking wild-card team in the Western Conference.
Beesley was in the rink to watch a few of the Cougar games during those two months playing in either Kamloops or Kelowna and it was a strange experience seeing that level of hockey with only a handful of NHL scouts and media in attendance.
“You sort of get used to it after a while but the first few games were bizarrely weird, it was like being on another planet almost,” said Beesley. “Mark (Lamb) was telling me about the shootout (a 1-0 Cougar loss to Vancouver on April 4) and that was the weirdest one of all. Normally in a shootout that’s when it gets the noisiest in the building and he said because everyone was focused on one shooter it went dead-quiet. He said he could hear every skate stride hitting the ice.”
The Cougars now face the ongoing struggle of trying to sell tickets for a full 34-game home schedule in the 2021-22 season. Cougar fans haven’t attended a game at CN Centre since March 7, 2020, when the Cougars beat the Vancouver Giants in overtime for their third-straight win before they headed out to wrap up the regular season on a six-game roadtrip. The building was only half full for that game and Beesley is hopeful that with a young and promising Cougar team that‘s positioning itself to be a legitimate title contender the next few seasons fans will want to be there to watch the team try to live up to its potential for success.
“Now that it’s been taken away, I think the community, even casual fans, are starting to realize they miss going and they’re starting realize they need to be able to get back together again to watch the Cougars, as well as other types of sports and entertainment in the city,” said Beesley.
“That old expression, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone really is true and I’m quite confident, when it’s safe to do so, people are going to want to come back, not just to support the team but for the sake of getting back together again.”
Although it hasn’t been released, the WHL schedule has been finalized and the Cougars are making plans for it the season to begin as usual in late September.
