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The Fort Wayne Komets aren’t accustomed to postponing games – they haven’t had to do so at home since 1999 – so they were understandably despondent Wednesday night after the Flint Generals couldn’t make it to town because of dangerous road conditions in Michigan.
More than 5,000 tickets had already been sold, which is a lot for a weekday game in February. Some fans and members of the team didn’t know the game had been postponed until they got to Memorial Coliseum. And the Komets, who have surged to the top of the standings, hope they don’t have their momentum dulled by the layoff.
“For us, this is a disaster tonight because we had (so many) tickets out for the game,” Komets president Michael Franke said, “and because it comes at such a late point in the day, it made it very, very difficult to get the word out. Hopefully we did that appropriately, as quickly as we could. It’s definitely something you don’t want, and I’m going to address this with the league, that we need to be cognizant of the weather, and if it looks like it might be bad, perhaps you leave the night before.”
The game has yet to be rescheduled, but Franke said the likely date will be March 5, pending Memorial Coliseum approval. Those who held tickets to Wednesday’s game will be able to use them when a rescheduled game is formalized.
“I know I was really pumped for the game. I got to the rink in my suit and everything and thought we were playing,” said coach Al Sims, whose International Hockey League-leading Komets (30-11-4) have a 12-point lead over the second-place Generals (21-11-10). “It was unfortunate for us because the more we play, the better we play.”
Snowy conditions and an iced-over windshield forced the Generals’ bus to pull off I-69 three times before league commissioner Paul Pickard decided to postpone the game around 4:15 p.m.
“The bottom line is, in this situation we don’t want to put any of the Flint personnel’s lives at risk,” Franke said.
It was the first time a Komets home game had been postponed since March 20, 2002, when a Freon pipe below the ice surface fractured and had to be repaired. But that postponement came with three days’ notice, after the Komets played a game with the defect and bad ice conditions. On Jan. 3, 1999, however, inclement weather derailed a game against the Michigan K-Wings at Memorial Coliseum.
A game later that year was delayed 2 hours, 17 minutes because a snowstorm got in the way of the Ohio Gears’ appearance at the Coliseum.
And the last Komets road game to be postponed came Jan. 5, 2005, when the team was on its way to Kansas City, Mo., before a flight was canceled and the game was called.
Fort Wayne will play host to the Port Huron IceHawks on Friday night.
jcohn@jg.net
