AHL Mighty Ducks were pro hockey’s last Cincinnati Gardens party

Eggplant — the purple produce and the color alike — can elicit disgusted interjections through mere mention.

But just as every dog has its day, the much-maligned hue had its heyday in the ’90s. The Cincinnati Gardens grabbed that glamour while it was hot, and while taking on what would be its last professional hockey tenant.

After 68 years, the historic Gardens is officially condemned for demolition by the end of this calendar year. When the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks arrived in 1997, it was already apparent that more time sat behind than ahead.

But the antique arena would not resist a redress while it was still functional. When Anaheim’s NHL franchise, whose team and building were both born in 1993, selected Cincinnati as its new AHL satellite, the dependent went all out.

The Cincinnati Gardens seating bowl took on a new eggplant-and-jade pattern, “which certainly weren’t two colors ever seen previously in the building,” former team broadcaster John Walton told Pucks and Recreation.

And at center ice, the instantly iconic duck-shaped goalie mask and cross-sticks occupied one half of the faceoff circle. The other half was filled by Cincinnati’s own Duck emblem, a helmet-and-visor-clad bird sneering before two interlocking twigs.

This was in the radiating afterglow of the Mighty Ducks’ marketing peak. One season earlier, the namesake live-action film trilogy had released it final installment, while ABC ran a single-season animated series. The actual Anaheim team was coming off its first Stanley Cup playoff, which lasted two rounds and likely helped to sustain young bandwaggoners from afar.

Up to that point, that bandwagon did not have much steam in the minors. After starting in its natural region with the IHL’s San Diego Gulls, Anaheim turned to the AHL with the expansion Baltimore Bandits. But the Bandits lasted a mere two seasons before seeking relocation.

With Cincinnati, the Mighty Ducks would get their first child club to take the parent’s name. While there were other variables in play, the Cincinnati Gardens would have Anaheim’s AHL team for eight seasons, quadruple the run of the team’s two prior incarnations.

“I know it was important to local ownership in Cincinnati to have a Disney-branded marketing angle,” said Walton. “And obviously Anaheim and Disney were okay with the terms of the agreement.”

The cultural commodity was a refreshingly effective asset for steadfast Gardens loyalists. By fostering the Ducks and their unconventional colors, the building witnessed a swift succession after the tempestuous exit of the IHL’s Cyclones.

The Cyclones had arrived as a Double-A ECHL franchise in 1990, ending the facility’s 16-year hockey drought. The place had a dense and integral hockey history, beginning with its inaugural event, a neutral-site clash between the Montreal Canadiens and Dallas Texans in 1949.

But after the AHL/IHL Mohawks (1949-58) and AHL Swords (1971-74), it appeared the newer and larger Riverfront Coliseum was Cincinnati’s go-to puck abode. It hosted the WHA’s Stingers in the latter half of the ’70s and a short-lived Triple-A Central League team in the ’80s.

With the Cyclones, it looked like the Gardens and Cincinnati hockey in general had gone back to the future. That was until the brand was elevated to the IHL in 1992, then moved to the Coliseum (by then renamed The Crown) five years later.

“Since 1990, the Gardens had served as the team’s home, and the crowds were terrific,” said Walton, who started working in professional sports as a public-address announcer for Reds baseball at Riverfront Stadium, next door to the Coliseum.

“Sellouts all the time, Jerry Springer, Reds players among their season-ticket holders. It really was remarkable how a low-level minor-league team had captured a city that had been without a pro team for the better part of a decade.”

But then, he continued, “The lure of a bigger downtown arena was too much for the Cyclones to say no to.”

The move to a building almost 25 years younger and more than 4,000 seats larger was a sign of the times for the IHL. Besides Cincinnati, the league added a rash of teams in NHL-size cities between 1992 and 1996.

The Cyclones variously opposed Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Orlando, San Antonio, San Francisco and Utah. A few teams left, but most stuck, giving a league full of unaffiliated franchises the look of a big-league box with bush-league contents.

When the AHL filled the Cyclones void in 1997, it gave Walton his first pro hockey play-by-play gig after two seasons at Miami University. His take on the civic divide: “In theory, both the caliber of play in the AHL and the name and theme gave the Ducks an edge over the IHL Cyclones.”

The two Triple-A leagues would coexist in the Queen City for four seasons, and it was nothing short of a divisive dynamic. The literally once-in-a-lifetime AHL-IHL overlap would not inspire interleague friendlies like the then-novel Mets-Yankees regular-season baseball sets in New York or Cubs-White Sox cards in Chicago. No one was sporting mixed-logo apparel to show support for both teams.

“There was a lot of resentment on both sides to two teams being in town,” Walton said. “Fans of the Ducks were generally angry that the Cyclones abandoned the Gardens, a building they loved. Cyclones fans disliked the presence of the Ducks, too, as some saw the Ducks trying to steal their fans.

“There just weren’t enough hockey fans to go around in a city the size of Cincinnati. There was a bit of poisoning the well on both sides, although personally the situation gave me my first pro job, so I’m a little biased about the situation.”

If there was ever a story where professional Mighty Ducks successfully emulated their Hollywood namesakes, Cincinnati’s saga was it. At first, the AHL Ducks were the new brand on the old block, an ostensibly disadvantageous double whammy.

Indeed, for each of their first three years of coexistence, the incumbent Cyclones drew better attendance figures. But that changed after the IHL crashed from its sugar rush, as the Ducks averaged 5,001 nightly fans in 2000-01.

The Cyclones, who had consistently been in the 6,000 or 7,000 range their first eight Triple-A seasons, dipped to 4,636. They were one of five franchises to fold along with the IHL that summer, though the ECHL picked up the brand.

Walton’s assessment of the struggle’s outcome evokes a familiar theory. On the eve of the IHL’s folding, Andrew Bourgeois of Hockey’s Future noted that the Cyclones’ circuit had developed “major-league travel budgets and salaries, and a major-league attitude that didn’t sit well with the NHL.”

Based on that, it is no surprise the Cyclones were the first to blink in their staring contest with the Mighty Ducks. Based on Walton’s informed take on the locale, it is only surprising the struggle persisted for four seasons.

“I still have family (in Cincinnati),” said the current voice of the Washington Capitals, “and while it’s easier than it used to be to find a hockey game on at a restaurant or bar, truth is most times I’ve had to ask for it to be put on, even in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“I think the Cyclones misread the market back in the ’90s, and thought they were bigger than they really were.”

Conversely, the Baby Ducks continued to cooperatively uphold their half of the cross-country shuttle with Anaheim. By 2001, their reward would come in the form of more hand-me-downs than just the Gardens.

With the merger, Cyclones fans who missed the matchups with Cleveland, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Houston, Manitoba, Milwaukee and Utah could go back to the Gardens and see the Ducks complement those rivalries. With that elixir of entities, a host of old and new blended as the next millennium began in earnest.

“The Gardens was never a building with anything close to modern amenities like you’d see in big buildings today,” said Walton. “But the views were good, the tickets and concessions were family friendly, and a lot of future NHL stars came through the building during that time.”

To that point, the 2001-02 season also saw Cincinnati yield a few Stanley Cup champions. In their third and final year as a shared Anaheim-Detroit affiliate, center Jason Williams topped their goal chart with 23. Williams, along with fellow Cincinnati product Jiri Fischer, got his name on the Cup with the 2002 Red Wings.

The next season, with Anaheim’s full custody of the Baby Ducks restored, a team rifer with Cincinnati alumni, including newly promoted coach Mike Babcock, began its unlikely Cup final run by sweeping the reigning champions in the first round. Though that run ended in defeat against New Jersey, former Cincinnati stopper Jean-Sebastien Giguere corralled the Conn Smythe Trophy.

The occasional opportunity to see established Mighty Ducks stars also made the Gardens a go-to venue. Walton, who left late in the 1999-00 season, remembers Teemu Selanne dressing for a preseason Anaheim-Nashville game.

As the NHL’s top goal-getter at the time, Selanne won the 1999 Rocket Richard Trophy. The trophy is named for the legendary Canadien whose team graced the Gardens for its first event 50 years prior.

Nightly attendance in Walton’s final year hit 5,386 fans, which would be the second-best in the team’s run. The 2001-02 campaign, the first one featuring all of the IHL refugees, would be No. 1 with 5,459.

As the Mighty Ducks generation got older, along with the Gardens, the eggplant-and-jade luster faded in the Fountain City. After the 2004-05 NHL lockout year, which saw Ryan Getzlaf come to Cincinnati for a two-round Calder Cup playoff run, Anaheim transplanted its prospects to Portland, Maine.

The forlorn facility initially looked primed to restore the AHL with the RailRiders circa 2006. But that franchise never saw action, and was sold to a group in Windsor, Ont., then to Rockford, Ill., where it lives on as the IceHogs.

Meanwhile, in its dusking years, the Gardens had a low-level junior team for one season. Otherwise, the Mighty Ducks account for its freshest hockey legacy, one that posthumously produced 10 of Anaheim’s 2007 Cup-winning players.

At U.S. Bank Arena (nee The Crown, nee Riverfront Coliseum), the Cyclones live on in the ECHL. There is no sign of the brand getting up for another promotion like it did in 1992. This means the Mighty Ducks remain Cincinnati’s last Triple-A hockey franchise.

In addition, the Baby Ducks’ eight-year stay at the Gardens will forever be the arena’s second-longest run by any hockey tenant. The record belongs to the Mohawks, who were there for its first nine years of existence.

The Cyclones could have had that record if they wanted it, but they didn’t. As a result, local fans got their chance to experience the sport’s Disney dazzle. And the likes of Walton got a career launching pad that ultimately brought him to The Show.

“I thought our staff did a fantastic job to generate interest and get people to come out and see our games,” Walton said. “Marketing was great, financial support for ad buys was always there, but southwest Ohio’s saturation for hockey interest just wasn’t as high as it is in other places.”

He concluded, “The Ducks gave it a good run, but it was always going to be an uphill battle. But I was proud to serve alongside some good people there, who believed in the product we had and wanted to make it work.”