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VANCOUVER — The rink was located in a mall in Palm Springs, Calif., the desert resort that is home to golfing retirees, weekending celebrities, and September temperatures in the high 30s.
It is not exactly a hockey town.
The occasion was a skating party for Mitch Wahl's older sister, Morgan, who was celebrating her 10th birthday alongside giggling little girls in rented white skates.
These were not exactly linemates.
Mitch Wahl of the Spokane Chiefs. (Getty Images)
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The parents looking on were Mitch and Michele Wahl. He surfed the Pacific Ocean, she skateboarded the streets of Seal Beach, Calif. By birthright, they were Californian to the core.
Not exactly Walter and Phyllis Gretzky.
But their son, then six years old, had his first skating experience a couple of weeks earlier and on his second try he was "mesmerized" by another little boy who wore black skates, hockey gloves and a Phoenix Coyotes sweater. Young Mitch chased him around with aptitude, prompting Michele to suggest they enroll him in "ice hockey."
Twelve years later, Wahl is the first-line centre with the Western Hockey League-champion Spokane Chiefs and a surefire NHL draft pick next month. Today, the Chiefs begin play at the Memorial Cup in Kitchener, Ont., with a trio of players born and bred in the U.S. Southwest — untraditional hockey territory to be sure, but increasingly fertile ground for WHL talent.
These Sunbelt kids are part of a new wave, rising up from the bottom left corner of the continental United States, and infiltrating major junior hockey west of Ontario. They are taking a traditionally Canadian route to the NHL, skating beside tractor-strong Prairie boys and riding buses through the B.C. Interior.
The number of U.S. players in the WHL has doubled over the past five years, and the Sunbelt kids are behind that spike. They cut their teeth in Wayne Gretzky's haunts, amid retired hockey professionals, with elite travelling clubs modelled after the Detroit-area youth programs founded by NHL owners such as the Mike Ilitch of the Detroit Red Wings and Peter Karmanos of the Carolina Hurricanes.
In 2007-08, players from Southern California, Arizona and Texas comprised the majority of Americans in the WHL. Eighteen of 33 players this season came from sun-splashed states, including one from Nevada.
"I don't think it's a blip, I think it could be a growing trend," Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz said. "Ten years ago, there just weren't hockey players of that calibre in California.
"There is now."
Not long ago, Rancho Santa Margarita and San Juan Capistrano might have been confused with Mexican restaurants on the WHL trail, pit stops somewhere between Manitoba and Oregon. But those are the hometowns of two accomplished Americans graduating from the self-proclaimed best NHL feeder league in the world.
In Rancho Santa Margarita, where they film The Real Housewives of Orange County, at least one of the cool teens played hockey. Jonathan Blum, who finished his Vancouver Giants career this season, won a Memorial Cup championship with the Giants a year ago and then became the first California-bred player selected in the first round of the NHL entry draft.
Not 25 kilometres away, the famous cliff swallows return to San Juan Capistrano each March, but goaltender Joey Perricone flew the coup to the bitter cold of Saskatchewan, where he played five seasons and set Moose Jaw franchise records for shutouts and saves. He is one of two Warriors goalies from Southern California.
Then there is Portland Winter Hawks forward Chris Francis. His career happened in Vegas, but it didn't stay in Vegas, not after Francis scored 185 points in 71 games for an AA midget team.
For the Wahls, other than a passing interest as spectators, there was no link to hockey and no reason to believe they would become familiar with the 6 a.m. practice. They sacrificed Thanksgivings and Christmases for tournaments in places such as Medicine Hat and Chilliwack, B.C., and divided their family between residences in California and Spokane, Wash., so that Mitch doesn't have to live with a billet.
"It became part of our lifestyle," Michele said from Spokane, where she resides with her son some 1,200 kilometres away from her husband in California.
When Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in August of 1988, the Wahls perked up. Their fascination with hockey turned into an interest, and their son had a new hero, whose No.ƒ|99 was on the back of young Mitch's pyjamas.
"I don't think he ever saw Gretzky play," Michele says of Mitch, who was born in 1990, "but we had a hockey room with posters, framed autographs, sticks and things we'd buy at auctions."
Gretzky has been credited with driving interest in hockey in the Southwest. After his blockbuster trade from the Edmonton Oilers, San Jose and Anaheim were granted expansion franchises and the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota North Stars relocated to Phoenix and Dallas. Those developments, unlikely to have happened without Gretzky's influence, came during a five-year period from 1991 to 1996, a timeline that syncs with the current influx of WHL Sunbelt kids, who were born between 1987 and 1991.
But for the kids, just as important as the contributions made by the Great One were the investments in minor hockey made by NHL teams, who were nudging parents to steer their children toward hockey.
With the Stars, for example, came five suburban arenas, called Dr. Pepper StarCenters, which supplied new-found ice time to the Texas public.
In Phoenix, there are at least six arenas and eight ice sheets. Spokane winger Curtis Kelner learned to skate at 11, when a rink was built near his home in Peoria, Ariz.
The facilities are usually based in well-heeled, suburban communities with large Caucasian populations, and the hockey programs that sprouted from them are also well-funded. For those reasons, hockey becomes serious at a young age for the Sunbelt kids.
Players like Kelner once played recreational roller hockey, but when he changed surfaces, the stakes were raised. Ice hockey was competitive, and it demanded huge amounts of time and money.
In 1996, Jack Bowkus, a Michigander and former professional player in Europe, and two friends established the California Wave program in Orange County.
By the bantam level, Wave players and their families were forced to commit to eight out-of-town tournaments a year to get games against top-level competition, which were not abundantly available at home. The team was also being charged $450 (all currency U.S.) an hour to rent ice.
The young players knew hockey through its NHL embodiment, not through the step-ladder of levels and leagues in Canada and northern states. In certain rinks, NHL players used the same dressing rooms, and with certain teams, the local logos and sweaters bore resemblances to the hometown NHL teams.
Some teams were coached by former professionals, such as former Kings forward Nelson Emerson and former Coyotes defenceman Jim Johnson.
This being California, there is also some star power.
Liam Stewart, the son of New Zealand supermodel Rachel Hunter and Scottish rock star Rod Stewart, plays for the L.A. Junior Kings and is a prospect for the 2009 WHL bantam draft.
The Sunbelt teams had financial means and the parents had plenty invested, as much as $20,000 annually for the truly ambitious travellers. The teams were run the American way: plush facilities, specialized coaching (private lessons in skating, shooting, stickhandling), off-season training, weightlifting and consultations with a nutritionist.
"There was a market for it, but I don't think [parents] were aware that their kids could go somewhere with hockey," Bowkus said. "[Now], the majority of kids involved are looking beyond youth hockey and are looking at junior, major junior, or college hockey."
And the NHL.
Canadian Jack Kent Cooke established the NHL in the sunny south with the expansion Los Angeles Kings in 1967. The idea was to sell hockey to Canadian ex-pats and decades later, that theory was expanded to include Yankees now living near NHL franchises across the south.
Many of the passionate fans come from Michigan, Minnesota or New England, and pass on their hockey interest to their children. But while many of the southern NHL franchises have had trouble carving out significant niches in cluttered sports markets, the grassroots investment is starting to bear fruit.
These days, Bowkus said most hockey-involved families in California are not transplanted northerners but natives "as green as you can come" to the sport.
"Everybody in the U.S. thinks we're absolute lunatics," Wahl's father said.
In the past 10 to 15 years, the WHL has expanded to 22 teams, and encountered more rivals along the talent path.
The United States Hockey League became an all-junior circuit in 1979 and the U.S. national team development team program was formed in 1996 to raise developmental standards and ice better national teams (much like Hockey Canada's highly successful Program of Excellence). College hockey has always been a huge draw, especially in Minnesota and the U.S. Northeast.
Suddenly, the WHL found itself needing more players and recruiting American prospects that had more options than before.
About a decade ago, the Canadian Hockey League's three leagues divided U.S. territory so it didn't become a free-for-all in recruiting. Bruce Hamilton, the owner and general manager of the Kelowna Rockets, was then the WHL's chairman of the board and remembers entering the meetings intent on securing Minnesota, the state of hockey, for his league.
The line was drawn due south of the Ontario-Manitoba border. Minnesota, the big prize, landed with the WHL while the Ontario Hockey League received Wisconsin, Michigan and New York.
Ironically, Minnesota didn't turn out to be a windfall for WHL teams. National Collegiate Athletic Association clubs in that region were powerful draws and the country's collegiate sporting culture kept many of best players away from major junior. To play major junior, a player had to be ready to move away from home and compete in a professional environment that was less focused on education.
The Sunbelt kids did not have college allegiances, however, and were used to travelling with their club teams.
"I'm finding it's more difficult [luring] the Minnesota and Dakota kids than it is with the kids from Arizona or L.A.," Chiefs director of scouting Chris Moulton said. "The Minnesota and Dakota kids, the colleges are right down their throats recruiting, and they are in a place where it is such a popular sport.
"USC is not banging down the hockey kid's door."
There are now more Californians (14) in the WHL than there are New Yorkers (12) in the OHL. Dallas, which falls just west of the dividing line, has two WHL players, the same number as Illinois in the OHL.
Today, three Californians play for the U.S. national development team, which is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and, like the WHL, recruits 16-year-olds. NCAA programs require high school graduates, meaning most players are at least 18.
That two-year gap is big for Americans. The best football, baseball and basketball players only leave home at 18, and usually for scholarships at NCAA institutions that serve as surrogates, taking care of lodging, meals, tuition and books, if not pocket money.
"I don't wish that decision on any family," the elder Wahl said. "It was a very stressful situation for us, especially with a kid who is just 16."
So, where is this going and how big can grassroots hockey in the Sunbelt become?
There are divided camps.
"It's not going to be like B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but it is producing some good players for us," said Hamilton, whose Kelowna franchise has been quick to jump on the Sunbelt trend.
Others have more optimistic views.
California, with a population of roughly 36 million, is loaded with active people, many of whom play multiple sports. The state has been a well-known breeding ground for professional athletes in the North American team sports, and for Olympic and individual sports.
"California has a lot of natural athletes," said Bowkus, who coached in the USHL for three years but has since has returned to the state to establish an AAA bantam program with the L.A. Junior Kings. "You're going to see more and more players, year after year."
Moulton, the Chiefs scouting director who is based in the Kootenay region of B.C., said that for the moment, his exposure to California prospects comes at Canadian tournaments. But that could soon change.
There are now enough California prospects that Moulton believes he should be tailoring his scouting budget to make regular trips to Orange County. Already, he employs a Los Angeles-area birddog and talks to hockey people about prospects in Arizona and Dallas.
The competition is also getting good enough that California teams might stop travelling as extensively as before, which would force WHL teams to come to their backyards.
For the past three years, the league has run a prospects camp at the Anaheim Ducks' training facility. About 80 players, or four full teams, are invited several weeks before the bantam draft so that WHL clubs have a central location to size up the talent.
Sunbelt kids have been taken in the first round in three of the last four bantam drafts. The 13th pick in this year's draft, Shayne McColgan, is from Manhattan Beach, Calif., while the 67th pick, centre Colin Jacobs, is from suburban Dallas. Some in the WHL consider McColgan and Jacobs the two best 1993-born American players.
"Someone I know who worked with the Dallas Stars told me that about 10 years ago, Ken Hitchcock said California would be the hotbed of [American] hockey in years to come," Bowkus said.
"I'm not sure he remembers making that statement, but I don't think it is a false one."
