Remember the Vancouver VooDoo and the 1990s roller hockey craze?

Remember the Vancouver VooDoo?

If you lived in Vancouver during the mid-1990s, how could you forget?

Vancouver’s first and only professional roller hockey team took the city by storm 30 years ago, playing their first home game at the PNE Agrodome on July 3, 1993.

Former Vancouver Canucks tough guy Dave “Tiger” Williams was the face of the franchise when it debuted as the team’s co-owner and head coach.

Geared to families and young people, the VooDoo were ahead of their time in embracing fan-friendly entertainment, complete with their “VooDoo Warrior” mascot and the “VooDoo Dolls” dance team.

According to a 1993 article in The Province by Howard Tsumura, during their first-ever home game, the team’s PA announcer told fans to bang the seat in front of them after every goal, calling this the “VooDoo Bongo Beat.”

They even offered free parking for fans at the PNE.

Playing in a new league called Roller Hockey International (RHI), the VooDoo sold out their first game and averaged 3,826 fans a night during their inaugural season. They drew 4,696 fans in 1994 and became so popular that they moved next door to the Pacific Coliseum in 1995, with an average attendance of 5,294.

Players weren’t well known for the most part, though Jose Charbonneau ended up earning a contract with the Canucks in 1993 after piling up 68 points in 14 games during the VooDoo’s inaugural season.

Games were televised on UTV locally and on ESPN in the United States. UTV also televised the first-ever RHI All-Star Game in 1994, held at the Pacific Coliseum, with Sports Page reporters Don Taylor, Dave Randorf, and Paul Carson featured on the broadcast.

 

RHI had a number of rule differences from the NHL, notably with games being played at four-on-four. Instead of three periods, there were four quarters and a halftime. And long before the NHL adopted it, there were shootouts to decide tied games.

The RHI began play with just 12 teams in 1993 but ambitiously doubled to 24 teams for its second season.

Many of the franchises had hilarious names, like the Anaheim Bullfrogs, Calgary Rad’z, Florida Hammerheads, Toronto Planets, Utah Rollerbees, Atlanta Fire Ants, New Jersey Rockin’ Rollers, and Long Island Jawz.

But as quickly as the league grew, it folded fast as well. The league shrank to 19 teams in 1995, 18 teams in 1996, and 10 teams in 1997. No season was played in 1998, but eight teams did return to play in 1999 before the league folded for good.

Bought and killed by Orca Bay

The VooDoo were doomed after they were bought by Orca Bay, the parent company of the Vancouver Canucks and Vancouver Grizzlies.

Williams and local investor Mike King purchased the RHI franchise for $55,000 in February 1993 and sold it to Orca Bay in 1995 for a reported $350,000.

Orca Bay had designs of taking the VooDoo experience to the next level and moved the team to GM Place, which had opened its doors for the first time less than a year earlier.

“A lot of what [the VooDoo] have made a mark on in the past few years has been the game presentation, merchandising, spectator involvement at games,” Tom Mayenknecht was quoted as saying in The Province in 1995, when he was VP of communications at Orca Bay. “Those are all the kind of things that fit in so perfectly with the Orca Bay vision of trying to stimulate and stress community excitement and community involvement.”

The VooDoo drew 7,506 fans to their first game at GM Place in 1996 and had an average attendance of 5,510.

But behind the scenes, there were issues, as the team lasted less than 12 months before it was killed by their new Orca Bay owners. The team folded in December 1996, just one month after John McCaw took over 100% ownership.

“We lost money,” Orca Bay president John Chapple said in the December 19, 1996 edition of The Province newspaper. “It was more of a cash drain than we had anticipated.”

Drawing parallels to the Grizzlies’ final year in Vancouver under Michael Heisley’s ownership, Orca Bay was criticized for a lack of marketing support for the VooDoo.

While the team had an average attendance of over 5,000 at GM Place, Chapple admitted that many of the tickets had been distributed through giveaways and promotions.

“They didn’t have a handle on how to market it,” VooDoo head coach Dave Cairns told The Province‘s Jonathan McDonald in 1996. “They didn’t have the expertise to go with the money.”

Cairns added that the team’s coaches tried to convince Orca Bay to promote the VooDoo on the big screen at Canucks and Grizzlies games or sell season tickets on the concourse — both techniques that the present-day Canucks do to promote the Vancouver Warriors lacrosse team.

“A lot could have been done that wasn’t done,” said Cairns.

“I always wondered why they weren’t doing more to promote the team,” said former player Shayne Green. “We were part of the organization but they never treated us as such.”

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