The Mississauga Steelheads are a model major junior franchise in many ways. Now they just need fans to notice

You go to the Mississauga Steelheads’ TikTok account and it all starts innocently enough with a silly little video of Montreal Canadiens prospect Owen Beck and teammate Zander Veccia playing Rock-Paper-Scissors, with the winner of each round slapping the loser across the face with a tortilla. Before long, you find yourself down a rabbit hole, watching snippets of everything from highlight-reel goals to who has the worst moustache on the team.

No need to feel badly. Apparently, it happens a lot. The Steelheads currently have 39,500 TikTok followers, which is more than any of the 60 Canadian Hockey League teams. While the Steelheads are a leader in online fan engagement, they’re perennially at or near the bottom of the Ontario Hockey League’s attendance rankings.

Which is a shame, because the Steelheads are actually good at doing more than putting together campy videos. Really good. At a lot of things. Under the leadership of GM-coach James Richmond, the Steelheads have become something of a model major junior franchise when it comes to on-ice performance, producing NHL players and combining elite hockey with a high level of academics. Consider the following:

This season, the Steelheads are primed to make a long playoff run and, perhaps a run for the Memorial Cup. Going into the season, they were ranked as the No. 8 team in the CHL and, despite losing three of their past four games, the Steelheads have an impressive 8-3-1 record, which is tied for third-best in the OHL. “I definitely think we have a good shot at a Memorial Cup run,” Beck said. “It’s definitely a long road and it’s going to be a long season, but we’ve shown so far that we can do some pretty special things and I think we’re going to keep doing that for the rest of the year.”

The Steelheads play an aggressive puck-pursuit style that places an emphasis on speed and individual creativity. Richmond, who earned a Stanley Cup ring in 2014 as part of the Los Angeles Kings’ player development staff, puts far less emphasis on systems than he does on skill development. In fact, players who aren’t in high school or post-secondary classes report to the Paramount Foods Centre on non-game mornings for sessions that are devoted solely to skill development. “What we are trying to do is make our players better each month,” Richmond said. “If you make 10 players better every month, your team is going to be better. As coaches, we spend so much time bogging ourselves down with systems instead of making the individual kids better.”

That includes all aspects of their lives, including school. Richmond said he once received a call from a league official who was concerned that the Steelheads were forcing all of their players to go to university if they had finished high school. And while that’s not the case, it’s heavily encouraged. Players are finished their schooling for the day by noon, have lunch at the rink, then practice and are out of the rink by 3:30 or 4 p.m., which gives them plenty of time for their studies. “I’ve actually had parents of prospects turn down the opportunity to play for us,” Richmond said. “They said we put too much of an emphasis on education.”

The Steelheads have a pretty good thing going and will be looking to add players before the trade deadline for what they hope will be a long playoff run. But actually attracting hockey fans in the league’s second-largest market behind Ottawa has been an enormous struggle. Owner Elliott Kerr said he would give the Steelheads three years to break even when he repurchased the team in 2012 and has lost millions of dollars since. He said the Steelheads need somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 paid per game to break even and in five home dates so far this season have averaged just 1,321.

To put the Steelheads’ attendance into perspective, they’ve attracted 6,606 fans to their games this season. That is only about 500 more than the Kitchener Rangers and 2,400 fewer than the London Knights drew for their home openers. The Steelheads’ lease at the Paramount Fine Foods Centre expires after this season and while Kerr said he prefers to keep the team in Mississauga, he can’t continue to absorb seven-figure losses. He is encouraged by the franchise’s social media numbers and said the organization plans to rebrand itself as a team for the entire Greater Toronto Area, not simply for Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville and Caledon.

“It’s disheartening to see sometimes,” Richmond said. “Once the game starts, that stuff doesn’t really bother us. We have a really high-end program and a good team and good players who are accessible. And they’re not bad kids. It bothers me to think there are families passing up on bringing their kids to watch our games. It’s disheartening, but I’ve got to get past that because I have to prop these kids up.”

SHARE: