Columnist Dean Juipe: Season opens with Thunder looking shaky

THIS COMES as no surprise.

The Las Vegas Thunder, either by its own doing or because of circumstances beyond its control, has been inching toward the highway for at least a couple of years. Now, based on comments from the city's arena operators, the International Hockey League franchise's sixth year in Las Vegas may well be its last.

It's a rumor not so much driven by the media, as team owner Ken Stickney suggests, but by continual input from those in and around the team as well as IHL contacts. A keen eye has come in handy as well.

It's as if the handwriting is on the wall. With the start of the regular season only two weeks away, the Thunder has been decidedly low profile in its marketing.

Notice any billboards? Newspaper ads? Anything at all to attract your attention to the team or toward buying tickets?

Granted, it's still a little early for hockey, yet the Thunder's marketing campaign looks like no campaign at all. By all appearances, management has decided to cut costs during what may well be a lame-duck final season at the Thomas & Mack Center.

It's no longer presumptuous to feel that this, indeed, is the end. When sources both far and wide say it's a "foregone conclusion" the team is ready to capitulate, you have to take notice.

Of course there's room for a reversal. An exciting team ... a championship season ... a series of near-capacity crowds at the Mack ... maybe each of those elements falls into place and the Thunder takes on the look of a cash cow to those calling the shots at the T&M.

Yet, in all probability, the team is just playing out the string. T&M arena director Pat Christenson is ready to sever ties with the Thunder and those handling the bookings at the other arenas in town say they're not interested in adding a minor-league hockey team.

By the close of the season next spring, there may be nowhere for the Thunder to go except under -- or out of town.

Three IHL teams have succumbed in the past year and the league itself may be in trouble. Overall attendance is down (despite huge crowds in the Rust Belt hockey cradle) and the salary cap has been dropped from $1.5 million per team to $1.2 million, in order to save a few bucks.

It isn't a bleak picture yet it's far from widespread prosperity. The I, as the league is known, has its sagging franchises and declining fortunes.

Its average player is 27 years old and either isn't going to make it in the National Hockey League or has already been there and is on his way back down.

A collection of those types of players can be a difficult sell, especially in the entertainment capital of the world.

Add in this dose of indifference: Hockey purists in Las Vegas -- and there are a few -- have never been enamored with the Thunder and would say the team is on the ropes by its own design. In a questionable approach to the game, the Thunder has always accentuated fights, goons and mayhem rather than trying to place a sleek, free-skating team on the ice.

The brawls get old. The tough guys come and go, their clownish ways and fistic abilities far overshadowing their hockey skills.

But it looks like the circus is about to pull up stakes.

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