SFU rising as possibility for Canucks' follow facility

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With land at a premium within the metropolis of Vancouver, it seems the Vancouver Canucks are beginning to look additional afield of their seek for a follow facility.

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As first reported by hockey information web site CanucksArmy, Postmedia has confirmed with a number of sources that Canucks chairman Francesco Aquilini has spoken a number of instances in latest months with officers at Simon Fraser College about the opportunity of the Burnaby campus internet hosting a brand new ice rink which might function a coaching centre for the Canucks in addition to a house to a varsity hockey program.

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It’s understood that Aquilini attended a fundraiser for the SFU males’s hockey crew, which doesn’t have full varsity standing however has a wholesome sequence of backers and the crew itself has been making strides to boost its profile — together with scheduling a sequence of video games this season towards NCAA Division 1 competitions — with the ambition of turning into a fully-funded varsity program.

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Aquilini, who graduated from SFU in 1985 with a enterprise diploma, has additionally met with prime college officers, together with president Pleasure Johnson, sources confirmed.

Canucks president of enterprise operations Michael Doyle decline to remark particularly on the SFU possibility.

“We’ve nothing to say proper now however this stays a precedence for possession and administration and we proceed to discover many choices. When we now have one thing to reveal, we absolutely will,” the instructed Postmedia in an announcement.

SFU didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The Canucks have been speaking about constructing their very own devoted follow facility since a minimum of 2010, once they ended a rental settlement with Burnaby 8 Rinks, now often called Scotia Barn, that had been in place since 1995. As an alternative, the crew has had non permanent offers to make use of the rinks on the College of B.C., in addition to again at Scotia Barn in latest seasons.

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There was a deal to handle a rink that’s deliberate to be constructed as a part of the redevelopment of the Plaza of Nations, virtually throughout the road from Rogers Area, however the Canucks walked away from that deal in early 2020.

One of many first issues president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford recognized as a crew want after he took over because the Canucks’ prime hockey particular person in December 2020 was a follow facility and Doyle has been in loads of talks round Vancouver about prospects, however up to now nothing agency has materialized. There are nonetheless a couple of choices within the metropolis, however most are initiatives that wouldn’t come to fruition for a few years and the Canucks want to have a brand new facility in place inside two or three years.

And so whereas Burnaby Mountain is probably not handy for the crew’s gamers, who largely stay on the west facet of Vancouver or in Yaletown, it does have websites, particularly an outdated, largely unused gravel car parking zone that was as soon as meant to be the 2010 Olympic speedskating oval, which can be nearly shovel-ready.

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Additionally, whereas some NHL groups, like Edmonton, Columbus and New Jersey, have their follow rink proper subsequent to their recreation area, most NHL groups have their follow amenities within the suburbs, 20 or half-hour away from their downtown area. The Canucks would probably nonetheless prefer to discover a location that’s nearer to Rogers Area, but when they don’t, it’s not like they’d be straying from the league norm — certainly by not having a follow facility in the intervening time, they’re already straying from the league norm.

SFU athletics are additionally in a state of flux. A report on the way forward for the mothballed males’s soccer program is because of be delivered quickly. If soccer is deserted, for SFU to stay within the NCAA, they’d have so as to add a brand new males’s program.

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That’s the place males’s hockey is available in. There are various backers who want to see SFU males’s hockey elevated to varsity standing and if SFU had been to stay with the NCAA, that program might grow to be a Division 1 program. There would probably be a Division 1 girls’s program established concurrently.

You’d suppose a Canadian-based NCAA Division 1 crew would don’t have any hassle recruiting gamers.

That stated, SFU’s future within the NCAA isn’t a lock. There’s plenty of feeling from senior management that SFU’s athletics packages ought to return to U-Sports activities, that there’s been little profit to the college by having their groups compete in america since being accepted as a Division II college by the NCAA greater than a decade in the past.

And so, it may be stated that SFU definitely is a chance for a Canucks coaching centre, but it surely’s nonetheless removed from a certainty.

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