The Albany Attack officially relocated to the HP Pavilion in San Jose this afternoon, ending several months of speculation about the franchise's future.

Thursday night, Attack owners Herb Chorbajian and Walter Robb finalized the team's sale to a group of investors led by San Francisco venture capitalist Peter Wendell and Toronto businessman John Bergsma.

Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NHL's San Jose Sharks, will run the team's business and promotional operations.

"This is a great day for the sports fans of San Jose, the entire Bay Area and the NLL," commissioner Jim Jennings said of his league's first US-based Pacific coast team. “We are now a truly national league, with teams across the United States and Canada."

"The arrival of this franchise in San Jose shows that our business plan is working. We have moved into another successful National Hockey League market, and formed a partnership with the NHL team in the market. We are very excited to work with the San Jose Sharks and look forward to a great future in San Jose.

"Our focus has been to make this national, both in Canada and the United States. We were successful bringing it coast to coast in Canada. Every day is hinging on us being a national league; that's national television, national sponsors... This is a dream come true for the owners. We made sure we had the right group to make our westward expansion possible."

Malcolm Bordelon, Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment's executive vice president of business operations, focused on the sporting side of the move, apparently moved by the Colorado Mammoth's wildly successful debut season in a market with only a developing lacrosse community.

"The sport of lacrosse has witnessed a substantial growth spurt across the nation and in northern California as well," Bordelon said. "The indoor professional game is a furiously fast paced contest that local fans will find hard to resist."

"I appreciate the hard work that brought this to play. I think our fans are in for something exciting."

Wendell emphasized lacrosse's grassroots growth in the Bay Area, noting, "In northern California, there's currently over 4,200 boys and young men that play lacrosse and almost 2,000 girls and young women."

"As Malcolm indicated, we have almost 700 people that registered looking for season ticket information," he added.

Bordelon said that the team's goal is 6,000 fans per game in the first season, and that the break-even point is around 8,000.

General manager John Mouradian, who built championship teams in Buffalo and Toronto, indicates that while many Attack players will fly from Ontario to California for the games each week, there are signs that quite a few will choose to live in Silicon Valley.

"Some Canadians have started the process [of acquiring green cards]," Mouradian said. "I've had some conversations with Jim Moss, and Jim feels there may be six to eight guys who, because of their situation, would love to come to San Jose."

Mouradian also noted the pool of talented American field players living in California.

"Part of our plan is to see how many of these US athletes in the market can play," he said. "There are players in this league from California. They may be available to us in some trade possibilities."

Asked about Casey Powell, the former Rochester Knighthawk who is now living in California, Mouradian noted that he is a great athlete but that he has not explored adding him to the team.

"I hadn't talked to Casey, so at this point, I'm not sure if he'd be interested in playing. I spoke to [Buffalo Bandits general manager] Kurt [Silcott], but we didn't talk specifics." (Buffalo holds the playing rights to Powell, who last appeared in the NLL in 2000.)

As for Albany, the long struggle to prevent the loss of another major professional team comes to an end. In recent years, the Capital Region has lost several baseball franchises, a Continental Basketball Association team, and the Arena Football League's Albany Firebirds, just a year after they won the ArenaBowl.

The Attack fell victim to poor attendance in its four seasons at Pepsi Arena, finishing eleventh among the league's twelve franchises this past season, with an average crowd of 3,689.

"We tried," said Chorbajian, who will retain a minority share of the team. "We gave it as good a try as we could, and a lot of people worked hard. But sometimes you work hard, and it just doesn't work out. That was the case here."

Weather also played a factor in the troubles. In the Attack's first season, 2000, a home game against the Philadelphia Wings was postponed twice due to a blizzard, and several other games were marred by snow-induced low turnouts. Attendance never recovered.

The fluffy white stuff and frigid conditions shouldn't be a problem in San Jose, where snow is practically unheard of and the average high temperature during NLL season is in the mid-60s (Fahrenheit).

The San Jose franchise will be renamed, with the club sponsoring a Name the Team contest. The winning entry will be rewarded by four season tickets for the inaugural season at HP Pavilion, a jersey autographed by the team, and the opportunity to conduct the ceremonial opening faceoff on opening night.

For more details about the contest or to submit an entry, visit bayarealacrosse.com. Entries are due by Friday, 27 June.

Outsider's Guide Assistant Editor Scott Neiss contributed to this report.