The town that banned chocolate in quest for a minor league hockey title
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
Winning a hockey championship requires sacrifice from the players. But the Coachella Valley Firebirds are asking their fans for an unusual sacrifice of their own during the team’s push for the American Hockey League’s championship round:
Giving up all forms of chocolate as the Firebirds face the Hershey Bears for the Calder Cup.
Ahead of the Calder Cup Finals against the Hershey Bears, the Firebirds called for “a boycott and removal of all chocolate in the Coachella Valley, including chocolate bars, chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream, chocolate donuts, and chocolate chip cookies.”
The Thousand Palms, California-based minor league affiliate of the Seattle Kraken, the Firebirds suggested that “fans craving chocolate should hold off until the end of the Calder Cup Finals.”
But why?
The Bears, which have been playing in the AHL since 1938 and are an affiliate of the Washington Capitals, are based in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the home of the Hershey candy company.
Evan Pivnick, the Firebirds’ director of broadcast and communications, said the campaign was born out of their fans’ enthusiasm for the newest AHL franchise all season.
“Our fans have been fantastic all year in terms of buying in and kind of doing whatever we kind of ask of them. So we were thinking of something to get a little rivalry going with the Hershey Bears,” he said. “We knew there was going to be one on the ice. So we settled on a chocolate boycott in the Coachella Valley off the ice. Don’t buy any. Don’t eat any. Just one of those old school little [gimmicks] to keep it fun and light.”
It’s the kind of attention-seeking more one might expect from a team that debuted in the AHL this season matched up against the league’s oldest franchise.
“We’re just happy that our fans are responding to this,” Pivnick said. “We’re trying to make a little bit of history against a very historic team.”
As Pivnick mentioned, the chocolate “ban” isn’t exactly a draconian one. The confection is still available around the Coachella Valley. Chocolate is also still being sold inside the team’s arena at concession stands — although their mascot, Fuego, attempted to make a statement by destroying some inventory on social media:
PSA: no chocolate allowed ? #FiredUp pic.twitter.com/LELWxaCh7e
— x – Coachella Valley Firebirds (@Firebirds) June 7, 2023
(Fans in the comments were quick to note that these were not Hershey chocolates. The team doesn’t sell any at home games, which now seems fortuitous.)
Rather than prohibiting the sale of chocolate, the Firebirds have decided to be more proactive:
They’ve instituted a chocolate amnesty program.
“We’re asking fans to bring in chocolate to the arena. One of our sponsors, Brandini Toffee, will exchange it out for a bag of popcorn,” Pivnick said.
Here’s where things go from symbolic to substantial for Coachella Valley: The team’s goal is to collect 1,000 pounds of exchanged chocolate to donate to the local FIND Food Bank, an organization “dedicated to relieving hunger, the causes of hunger, and the problems associated with hunger through awareness, education, and mobilization of resources and community involvement.”
The team is currently doing “chocolate exchanges” at home games and is working on having them at the Firebirds’ viewing parties. Coachella Valley lost to Hershey in Game 3 on Tuesday. The Firebirds lead the series 2-1, with Game 4 on Thursday.
He said the team wasn’t worried that the Bears might ban one of the Coachella Valley’s leading food items.
“We weren’t really worried, because one thing that the Coachella Valley is known for is dates. It’s a big agriculture area, and dates are the big thing,” he said. “I think when you stack up dates versus chocolate, I think chocolate’s going to win. We weren’t really too concerned about that.”
Coachella Valley has outscored Hershey 13-4 through three games in the series.
Obviously powered by the chocolate ban, right?
“We’d like to think there’s some correlation to it,” Pivnick said. “I’m not sure if anything is too hand in hand. But what we’ll say that it is that the withdrawal of chocolate has made us hungry for the Calder Cup.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Toronto Blue Jays became the first American League team to secure a spot in the postseason on Sunday with an 8-5 victory against the Kansas City Royals.
The AL-best and AL East-leading Blue Jays locked up a playoff spot with a week remaining in the regular season after a less-than-stellar start of 16-20 in early May and trailing by as many as eight games in the division in late May.
“I remember back when we were in Tampa in May, we weren’t playing very well and we got swept there,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “I think these guys did a great job of rallying around each other, but the turning point was really when we came out of Tampa and went into the Texas series.”
This is Toronto’s third playoff berth in four years and fourth in six seasons. They missed the postseason in 2021 and 2024. Playoff success has been elusive for the Blue Jays, who haven’t won a postseason game since 2016. And, unlike the past three trips, they hope this year they won’t have to play in the AL wild-card round as they try to win their first division title since 2015 as they close out the regular season with a six-game homestand against Boston and Tampa Bay.
“You could feel it with this group in spring training,” Schneider said. “I know that sounds really cliché, but when you get a group of men that are committed to the same goal, you can do things like this.”
The Blue Jays’ 90-66 record is tops in the AL and they lead their division by 2½ games over the New York Yankees. If Toronto wins the AL East and has one of the two best records in the league, it will advance to the AL Divisional Series, which starts Oct. 4.
The last time Toronto made it that far was nine years ago.
“I’m just so happy for them,” Schneider said. “It’s hard at this level for everyone to put their egos aside and to play for one another. It’s so cool to see these guys completely happy for one another when they get the job done no matter who it is. This is the most fulfilling team I’ve ever been a part of with different characters, different skill sets, guys coming together for one common goal which is what’s important now. This is something you always celebrate.”
The Blue Jays are trying to win their first World Series since 1993.
“Today we go back to the postseason, but the journey is not over yet,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said. “We still want to win the division over the next six games. Since spring training, everyone has been together and when you see a team like that you start believing.”
Toronto snapped a four-game losing streak with Sunday’s win, and after the game popped champagne in the visitors clubhouse in Kansas City.
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