NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
WHL Commissioner Ron Robison speaks at the Medicine Hat Tigers pre-game banner raising ceremony honouring longtime broadcaster Bob Ridley on April 2, 2022.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Western Hockey League is one season away from seeing change at the top position.
Ron Robison, the WHL’s longest serving commissioner, has announced his retirement after the 2023-24 season, his 24th campaign. The Indian Head product worked with Hockey Canada for close to 20 years before joining the WHL as commissioner and chief executive officer in 2000.
In a press conference Thursday with league media, one day removed from the WHL’s general meeting to wrap up the 2022-23 season, Robison said it was his time and expressed his desire to open the spot for someone else to take the reins.
“I’ve been at this for a long time, this will be my 44th year coming up in the system, 20 years with Hockey Canada and 24 with the Western Hockey League,” Robison said. “I think it’s time to step aside and let others have an opportunity to have the ability to run this great league. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have some great experiences working with some great people. We’re well positioned here for succession.
“The right time is now and the commitment I made to the league was to make sure post-COVID that I remained here until we saw the recovery trending in the right direction, and I think the ongoing stability of our teams has been the focus for myself and for the ownership. I feel good about where we’ll be at the end of next season.”
He said the board of governors has just started the hiring process and will have further information at a later time but didn’t expect that to take too long. He says the immediate challenges facing his successor will be to continue attracting top talent to the league and sustainability of the 22 teams in the league.
“We do a great job in Western Canada, I think there’s going to be much more emphasis placed now with six teams in the U.S. on our U.S. recruiting players,” Robison said. “I think there’s a lot of upside for our teams in that regard and because we offer the best development for players of junior age, anywhere in North America, and arguably in the world.
“We have a very unique league with small markets competing with large markets and the economics of running these teams, it’s really challenging for the small market teams. That’s something we’re going to be paying very close attention to, looking at our business model to make sure that all teams can continue to be viable on a long-term basis.”
The other large topic coming out of the WHL’s 2022-23 season is the Winnipeg Ice being sold to an ownership group in Wenatchee, Wash., becoming the Wenatchee Wild and joining the U.S. division in the Western Conference. The Ice franchise relocated from Cranbrook, B.C., ahead of the 2019-20 season after making what was eventually empty promises of a new facility.
Robison says the league learned an important lesson from the debacle.
“The Winnipeg scenario was really all about the facility,” Robison said. “We have very clear requirements for facility standards and if those standards aren’t met, then we have to look at alternate locations. In this particular case, we probably should have had a more firm commitment on the facility as far as construction underway, to make sure that we didn’t encounter the challenges we did.
“It’s just unfortunate we didn’t get to a position where we had a facility of standard for Winnipeg to play in because we obviously value that market extremely high.”
Robison did confirm there were other markets from the U.S. and B.C. interested in purchasing the franchise but said the board liked what Wenatchee had to offer.
The full schedule for the 2023-24 season will be released Tuesday, with home openers and the preseason schedules due Monday. The Swift Current Broncos will remain in the Central division for the upcoming season before relocating to the East for 2024-25. Robison cited the Broncos having the chance to host U.S. teams for the first time since 2018-19 as one of the reasons to delay the switch.
The WHL saw an increase in attendance last season, with numbers returning to pre-COVID levels. Average attendance over the course of 748 WHL regular season games was 3,895, up 22 per cent from the average mark of 3,205 in 2021-22.
The 2023 WHL Playoffs served up a 37 per-cent increase from the 2022 WHL playoffs, with an average attendance of 4,689 over 75 games compared with an average of 3,575 over 72 games the previous post-season.
This year’s run to the postseason featured teams loading up on high talent and dealing large numbers of draft picks compared to years past. Seattle, Winnipeg and Kamloops all made substantial deals with Seattle and the former Ice franchise trading away so many picks they only have four above the sixth round in the next three drafts.
Robison says there were discussions at the league level about the number of picks moved but says they felt like teams had the desire to go all in with the Memorial Cup hosted in Kamloops, giving multiple clubs an opportunity to participate.
“It’s different than what we’ve seen in the past for sure,” Robison said. “I don’t believe we’re contemplating any changes but we’re going to be monitoring how that looks moving forward. Right now I think teams feel confident they can find ways to replenish those draft choices and still remain competitive moving forward.”
Robison hopes to visit every WHL building in his final season.
