The cover story in tomorrow's Weekly is all about SF's new minor-league hockey team, the San Francisco Bulls, and how they're doing in their nascent few weeks over at the Cow Palace. It's been the passion project of Canadian-born Pat Curcio, a one-time player and coach who decided to take on San Francisco as a venue for hockey. He's dumped a ton of his own money into the franchise, as well as the money of "a consortium of well-heeled Canadians," and the pre-season just got off to its start in October.
Now all they have to do is sell some tickets.
The team of thirteen rookies is struggling a bit, but at least they're not in last place anymore! As of this week, they're in second to last place in the western division of ECHL (East Coast Hockey League, which actually now has west coast teams), just ahead of Las Vegas's minor league team, the Wranglers. Also, there's the indignity of the Cow Palace itself, which the team has to share with the annual Grand National Rodeo that comes to town (did you know that's why it's called the Cow Palace?) every October, manure and all.
All the players, we find out from SF Weekly, have been hooked up with apartments over in Park Merced, and you can see them all here, looking happy, in their locker room. Also, we find out that playing a minor league sport, like hockey, isn't going to get you rich these players are lucky if they make $800 a week.
Well, we have all our sports bases covered now that the Warriors are moving in, and until the 49ers move out. We still say hockey's going to be a hard sell around here.
