At The Canuck, New York City’s first hockey sports bar, fans congregate during the Stanley Cup Finals and during the National Hockey League season.
New York City has always had a score of sports-loving fans who follow professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey and proudly wear their Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Giants, Jets, and Rangers caps. . And they often congregate at various sports bars to watch games.
But Denis Ladouceur, a Canadian and former COO of a Wall Street firm living in New York, felt the city was missing a major gathering place: a sports bar dedicated to hockey fans. In December 2021, The Canuck opened on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea to attract the legion of New York area hockey fans who follow the New York Rangers, New York Islanders, and New Jersey Devils, as well as other Canadian fans. of the Montreal Canadiens or Maple Leaf’s of Toronto.
He said The Canuck appeals to a wide demographic including “Canadians, expats in town and visiting Canadians, hockey fans, sports fans and locals looking for a clean and friendly neighborhood pub.”
Although professional ice hockey has been Canada’s national sport, Ladouceur noted that “Madison Square Garden has more than 20,000 fans at every Rangers game.” Also, most sports bars give preference to baseball, football, and basketball, downplaying hockey.
“The city desperately needed a place where hockey was the first priority, on the big screens, where hockey fans could come together and watch it together,” he said.
New York’s first hockey-focused sports bar has been generating word of mouth, drawing crowds to watch hockey games and establishing a niche but loyal audience.
When Ladouceur left his job in finance during the pandemic, the time was right to make the leap and fulfill his dream. Having no restaurant experience, Ladouceur did his “homework” by meeting with a group of restaurant experts to “better understand the costs, downfalls, benefits, and requirements associated with the industry.”
He wanted to open the hockey bar in Chelsea because of its proximity to Chelsea Piers and its ice rink. He says there are about 1,500 people involved in his amateur hockey league and many of them go to The Canuck for dinner or a beer, “almost every night,” he said.
He hired a restaurant consultant who steered him in the right direction to hire the right staff, both front and back of the house, design the menu, and identify the necessary food vendors.
Memories of The Canuck go beyond hockey and into Canadian culture. He noted that “there are numerous photos of iconic Canadians, Canadian sporting moments where the consumer can enjoy their Canadian beers and eat poutine (french fries and cheese topped with gravy). Everyone asks for poutine,” not just Canadians, he said.
He financed the opening of The Canuck with his own personal funds supplemented by investors who were friends and family.
The restaurant is 2,000 square feet, filled with twelve tables, with a capacity of 65 seats. The bar area has 15 stools and there is outdoor seating with three or four tables, seating eight to a dozen people.
Ladouceur says the menu specializes in burgers, club sandwiches and Caesar salads. It also offers several specialty cocktails such as the Caesar, the Canadian version of the Bloody Mary, made with Clamato juice instead of tomato juice, and the Maple Old Fashioned, a classic whiskey made with maple syrup.
The menu includes pulled pork sandwiches, chicken tenders, buffalo chicken burritos and an Impossible Burger. Draft beers include a number of Canadian brands, including Labbatt Blue, Collective Arts, as well as American and Irish beers.
“We wanted the food to be suitable for a Canadian pub. I do not want to recreate the food industry but to offer simple and quality food”, he explained.
Business boomed in late May and early June when the hometown New York Rangers made a playoff run, beating the Pittsburgh Penguins and Carolina Hurricanes before falling in seven games to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had won the last two Stanley Cups. “The bar would reach full capacity for every Rangers playoff game and the energy from the crowd and the games was incredible,” he said.
Ladouceur employed a variety of strategies to publicize the opening of The Canuck, including targeted advertisements to designated Canadian groups on Facebook and Instagram and sponsorship of local hockey teams at nearby Chelsea Piers.
As the professional hockey season wraps up at the end of June, he intends to host events like birthday parties and work parties, weekly trivia nights that will keep the regulars going, until the next National Hockey League season kicks off in fall.
He expects the summer to be slower, though he also expects Yankees, Mets and Blue Jay fans to keep the bar jumping. It has introduced a Saturday and Sunday brunch and added more outdoor tables.
When I visited The Canuck on the night of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, the joint was jumping. Ladouceur is getting ready for the crowd of hockey fans, wearing a Moosehead Brewery jersey and looking relaxed but busy.
The bar is packed with Canadian and hockey memorabilia with photos of Canadian-born celebrities like Celine Dion, Martin Short, John Candy and William Shatner, and hockey trading cards of the 1994 Rangers team, their most recent Stanley Cup-winning team.
He estimated that about 20% of his clientele is Canadian. “Canadians walk by, they see the flag and they have to stop, and there are more Canadians in the neighborhood than you might expect,” he said.
Asked if he will show the Yankees game that night, Ladouceur says, “We’re a hockey bar, so it’s going to be the Stanley Cup on all screens.” The Yankees will have to wait until the NHL season officially concludes.
He said the keys to their future success are “consistency, making sure we maintain the quality of our food and keeping our staff, because of the atmosphere and energy they create.”
Ladouceur is working hard but having fun in his first six months as owner of the city’s first exclusive hockey bar. “I want it to embody the Canadian spirit, to be a Canadian bar so that when Canadians go out to dinner they feel at home,” he explained.
