Broomfield – On Sunday in Detroit, Montreal-born goaltender Jose Theodore was trying to make the most of his first start in the Avalanche net in a month.
Theodore will make $5.5 million this season.
At the same time, in front of a sparse Broomfield Event Center crowd, Montreal-born goaltender David Guerrera made 33 saves to collect his first shutout of the season for the Central Hockey League’s Rocky Mountain Rage.
Guerrera’s entire team will make about $240,000 this season.
The Rage, which was 10-24-4 after a 3-0 victory over the Arizona Sundogs, plays 17 miles from the Pepsi Center and the NHL.
In more real terms, Rage players are on the other side of the hockey world, with little chance of making the NHL.
“My dream?” asked Guerrera, 28. “I just have a dream of being happy.”
After leaving Detroit’s Wayne State University, where he played four seasons, he spent two years with the CHL’s Laredo (Texas) Bucks, and was the league’s playoff MVP in 2003-04. He was with a team in Norway last season, but decided that one season of lutefisk and fjords was enough. Perhaps it was linguistic frustration: Guerrera, the son of Italian immigrants to Canada, fluently speaks Italian, French and English and a bit of Spanish – but no Norwegian.
The Rage is a first-year CHL franchise, struggling at the gate and on the ice in the crowded metropolitan sports scene. Officially averaging 4,000 in home attendance, it is having little success in attempting to emulate the Colorado Eagles, who have packed Loveland’s Budweiser Events Center for every home game since their 2003 birth, won one CHL championship and again are dominating this season.
With so much competition for both the hockey and entertainment dollars, the Rage toils in relative obscurity. Making matters worse, in recent weeks the team has been so short-handed because of injuries, it has been down to 10 skaters, with little ability to call in help because of the league’s strict salary cap. It probably tempted coach Tracy Egeland, a major junior teammate of Joe Sakic’s with the Swift Current Broncos, to turn around and ask of the fans behind him, “Hey, can anybody skate?”
Yet you get the feeling that this ragtag group – made up of a mixture of minor-league journeymen and young players – wouldn’t get caught complaining about their plight. At least not in public.
They’re still playing, and at a new, $45 million arena on the side of the Boulder Turnpike that is the home of the Rage and the Colorado 14ers of the NBA Development League.
Partners John Frew and Tim Wiens own both franchises and have an agreement with Broomfield to operate the city-owned arena, but there are times you scratch your head and wonder why anyone would have thought minor-league hockey could be viable so close to both the Pepsi Center and the University of Denver, which has comparably priced tickets and a tradition-drenched, successful NCAA program.
But that’s not the players’ fault.
They just skate on.
“It’s tough because there are so many teams here,” Guerrera said. “But we have a core group of fans who like what we stand for. We play hard. We’re not spoiled. I think we have a group of fans who know and appreciate that.”
Defenseman Don Vandermeer, 28, is a playing assistant coach, and he has T-shirts to prove that he has played in several of the sport’s lower- minor leagues. He met his wife, Kristi, during his four- season stint with Richmond of the ECHL, and he has been all over the map since. His young son, Justin, was romping through the dressing room after the game Sunday.
The chances of him joining his younger brother, Jim, a Chicago Blackhawks defenseman, in the NHL are negligible. There are some players in the CHL on loan from NHL organizations, including Arizona center Ryan Steeves, 24, an Avalanche farmhand who has a Yale degree in political science. But even those players are considered second- tier prospects in most cases.
Does Vandermeer ever wonder why he’s still playing?
“I don’t. Kristi may,” Vandermeer said with a laugh. “No, I’m just playing and having fun while I still can. I know it’s not going to last forever.”
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
