Vancouver Ravens

National Lacrosse League (2001-2004)

Tombstone

Born: 2001 – National Lacrosse League expansion franchise
Folded: December 14, 2004¹

First Game: December 1, 2001 ( vs. Toronto Rock)
Last Game: April 4, 2004 (W 13-10 vs. Arizona Sting)

NLL Championships: None

Arena

General Motors Place
Opened: 1995

Branding

Team Colors:

Ownership

Owners:

2001: Tom Mayenknecht, David Stadnyk & Bob Smary
2001-2002: Tom Mayenknecht, Paul Reinhart & Bob Smart
2002-2003: Paul Reinhart
2003-2004: Tom Mayenknecht & Joe Wilmott

NLL Expansion Fee (2001): $500,000²

Background

The Vancouver Ravens were a professional box lacrosse franchise that staggered through three indoor seasons in the National Lacrosse League between 2001 and 2004. The team played at General Motors Place, home of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks and the soon-to-depart Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association.

The ‘Blackbirds’ were decent in competition, at least for their first two campaigns. The 2001-02 squad posted a 10-6 regular season record in their debut season, fourth best among the NLL’s 13 teams that season. The Rochester Knighthawks eliminated the Ravens 11-10 in a single-game quarterfinal playoff. In 2003, the Ravens again made the playoffs with a 9-7 record. This time the Colorado Mammoth knocked them out in the quarterfinal round.

In the Ravens final season during the winter of 2003-04, the club regressed to a 5-11 mark and missed the postseason for the first time.

Nevermore

Behind the scenes, the Ravens were a perpetual soap opera. Local co-founder Tom Mayenknecht hustled and scraped to keep the team alive despite massive financial losses each season. But Mayenknecht, a former Grizzlies PR executive, did not have anything close to the personal resources to sustain the Ravens’ annual deficits. Despite finishing 3rd in the NLL in attendance with 10,211 fans claimed per contest, the Ravens lost a reported $800,000 in their inaugural season of 2001-02.³

The NLL had heavy hitters in other key markets, such as the billionaire NBA and NHL owner Stan Kroenke, who backed the league’s flagship Colorado Mammoth franchise. But Mayenknecht was unable to lure in that caliber of investor. Instead, he found himself ensnared in failed courtships with OTC penny stock promoters like David Stadnyk and Raj Kalra and a doomed partnership with former NHL All-Star Paul Reinhart.

Stadnyk, expected to be the Ravens’ main financier, bailed on the Ravens shortly after the franchise was announced in the spring of 2001. (He would shortly abandon the pro soccer Vancouver Whitecaps as well). Mayenknecht next turned to Paul Reinhart, who finished his NHL career locally with the Canucks in 1990. Reinhart ended up putting up most of Vancouver’s $500,000 expansion fee and eating most of the team’s heavy first season loss.⁴ A displeased Reinhart pushed Mayenknecht out of the ownership group and became the presumed owner for Year 2, only to realize he couldn’t right the ship. Midway through the 2002-03 season, Reinhart walked away and handed the deteriorating mess back to the National Lacrosse League to deal with. For a time, it appeared that Ravens might fold without completing the regular season.

Instead the NLL brought Tom Mayenknecht back to continue hustling for new investors. The Ravens improbably completed the 2002-03 season and staggered through the next one as well. This despite the fact the team never formed a properly funded ownership group and relied on various short term bridge financing schemes to survive. Players, coaches and staff periodically went unpaid. In June 2003, the NLL approved a sale of 80% of the franchise to Atlanta-based Raj Kalra – a buyer the league itself brought to the table. But the move followed a familiar script, with Kalra’s group talking a big game but failing to close the deal.

The NLL finally pulled the plug on the Ravens on December 14th, 2004,. League officials deleted the team from the 2005 schedule less than three weeks before the season opener.

Aftermath

Two weeks after the Ravens collapsed in December 2004, the Major Indoor Soccer League revoked its San Diego Sockers franchise in midseason. The Sockers’ new owner of just a few months, Raj Kalra, had failed to pay the team’s players, staff and vendors.

The Ravens saga stretched out for several more years behind the scenes. In 2007, Tom Mayenknecht made a bid to return the Ravens to play in the 2008 NLL season. But the next year, a bitter legal judgment in favor of the NLL severed any potential claims that Mayenknecht or the numerous unsecured creditors from the Pacific Northwest community that helped keep the Ravens alive in 2003 and 2004 might have sought on a new franchise coming into the market.

The National Lacrosse League returned to the region in 2014 with the arrival of the Vancouver Stealth franchise, who set up shop at the suburban Langley Events Centre. In 2018, the owners of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks acquired the Stealth and moved the team back to Rogers Arena, (previously known as General Motors Place when the Ravens played there). Canucks Sports & Entertainment also re-branded the team as the Vancouver Warriors simultaneous with the move. The Warriors remain members of the NLL today.