Meet the Bulls: A new hockey era begins in Wooster

Wooster is about to become Hockey Town. And that ain’t no bull.

Coming this fall to Alice Noble Arena, the Wooster Bulls will drop the puck for the first time. A semiprofessional hockey team, the Bulls will compete in the American Premier Hockey League. The league has teams in Flint, Michigan (Lumberjacks), Buffalo (Tempest) and Toledo (Mobsters), among other places. The Bulls will open the season on Saturday, Sept. 27 at home against the Iron City Forge. Iron City, as its name suggests, hails from the Pittsburgh area.

That exhibition game is the only one currently on the schedule. The full schedule should be released soon, with regular-season play expected to begin in mid-October and run until the middle of May. All games will be played either Saturday night or early afternoon on Sundays.

Cody Lang, Bulls president of hockey operations and owner, said the APHL would be about the equivalent of Class A baseball.

“It is a league providing players that are still living out the dream of playing professional hockey at higher levels a place to hone the skills needed to move to the next level,” he said. “It is also a league for players that have maybe come to the end of living that dream or want somewhere to play after finishing playing junior or college hockey, a place to continue playing competitive hockey.”

The team will play about a 24-game schedule, depending on where the APHL lands with that this coming season. Other squads are the West Michigan Sentinels in Holland, Michigan; Kalkaska Battlers in the Traverse City, Michigan area; Hudson Valley Vipers in Poughkeepsie, New York; and Summit City Distillers in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. It’s possible another team or two could be added this season.

The nickname Bulls is tied into the area’s reputation for dairy cattle and farming. Colors pay tribute to area youth and high school teams with a bit of the club’s own additions. The orange and black hues are most similar to Dalton among area high schools.

Lang said the product of hockey could be a tough sell as far as drawing crowds, but that doesn’t mean he expects it to be. The area has shown an affinity for local teams, from high school squads to The College of Wooster.

“I think there are enough people around Wooster that enjoy hockey and will come support the team,” Lang said. “It’s getting the people that don’t know much about hockey or have not been to a hockey game before that we really want to get through the door. We want them to experience hockey and what a great sport it is. The number of people I have met at their first hockey game who have become lifelong hockey fans has been very high. It’s not just about growing our hockey team, but also the Wooster youth hockey and high school hockey.”

People who follow hockey at nearly any level will tell you it’s the best sport to see in person. The pace of play seldom stops or even slows, and the frenetic action is hard to take your eyes off.

Hockey does not televise as well. It can often be difficult to follow the puck on a small screen, and the back-and-forth play makes it almost impossible to televise without moving the camera angles too wide to really display the pace.

Once in an arena, hockey fans are often treated to all sorts of other entertainment, something having a pair of intermissions in each game lends itself to.

“Hockey is by far the best live sport you can attend,” Lang said. “Everything we have in store for our games and the presentation we will have for our games will keep fans wanting to come back game after game. We can fit about 750 fans inside The Noble, and we intend on filling that. The more fans and the louder The Noble gets, which will only make it a better playing atmosphere for our players but make it very hard for visiting teams to play in our barn.”

Single-game tickets will be available at the door for $12 cash or $13 via Venmo. Season tickets are $130 for the 12-game home season. That means a season-ticket package offers about two games for free. Lang said season tickets will come with some other perks, which have not yet been announced.

“We are doing everything we can to keep the pricing at a reasonable price and family-affordable,” he said. “Ticket sales are also a major money support to keeping teams around and not folding. We have a kids club and booster club that fans can join for a small fee that also helps support the team and makes fans feel like they are an even bigger part of the Bulls team.”

Lang said Northeast Ohio is somewhat of a hockey hotbed. Just an hour from Cleveland and the Monsters and a little further from Columbus and the NHL Blue Jackets, area folks can see the highest levels of the sport with just a short drive.

Now they’ll be able to take in a game without going much of anywhere.

“Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo all have very good youth hockey programs with lots of kids,” Lang said. “Wooster youth hockey is starting to grow again, and we are hoping to do everything we can to help them grow as well.”