Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2003 | 9:13 a.m.
ECHL at a glance
Compiled by Rob Miech
The settlement
On the 39th day of a players' strike, the ECHL and the Professional Hockey Players' Association finalized a new three-year contract Tuesday.
The main issues
The timetable
The ECHL
A developmental league that bills itself as "America's Premier AA Hockey League," it is officially known by those four letters and is the product of the summertime merger of the East Coast and West Coast hockey leagues.
It has 31 teams, with 17 divided among the Northern Division and Southern Division in the Eastern Conference, and 14 in the Central Division and Pacific Division in the Western Conference.
Each team will play a 72-game schedule.
The Wranglers
The Las Vegas expansion team is owned by Charles Davenport, who also owns the Fresno Falcons. A year ago, Davenport told Falcons assistant coach and player Glen Gulutzan that he wanted Gulutzan to be the Wranglers' coach and general manager.
Over the summer, they became affiliated with the Calgary Flames and will feed players to that NHL team's farm team in Lowell, Mass., of the American Hockey League.
Flames general manager Darryl Sutter has boasted about the Orleans Arena to many since he first toured the spiffy $60 million, 7,000-seat sports palace. Ample restrooms, concession stands and concourse plasma television screens, extra-wide upholstered seats and free parking highlight its amenities.
They will play in the Pacific Division, with Alaska (Aces), Bakersfield (Condors), Fresno (Falcons), Idaho (Steelheads), Long Beach (Ice Dogs) and San Diego (Gulls).
A players' strike that had reached 39 days ended Tuesday when the ECHL and the Professional Hockey Players Association finalized an agreement on a new three-year contract.
The league's 31 teams will start their training camps this weekend and the ECHL will begin, on schedule, in two weeks.
"It was a learning experience for all of us," said ECHL president Brian McKenna. "The current economic condition made it tougher, but the end result is good and we're very much looking forward to marching into the season.
"We're looking forward to working with the players' association closer over the next few years to build the relationship."
Now the fledgling Las Vegas Wranglers will not have to delay the start of their first season or begin it with a band of scab players.
Las Vegas is scheduled to open the 2003-04 campaign in Boise, Idaho, against the Steelheads, on Oct. 17. The Wranglers make their Orleans Arena debut, against Bakersfield, on Oct. 21.
Glen Gulutzan, the Las Vegas coach and general manager, was moving and arranging furniture, with a team equipment manager, in the apartment complex that will house his players when told of the settlement.
"Thank God," he said. "I'm really happy it's settled. It just allows you to move forward and ends all the speculation. There's nothing worse than speculation and not knowing when it will begin. Now it gives us an avenue to move forward."
The former contract expired May 31. After nearly three months of little headway, the players chose to strike Aug. 22.
A salary cap and floor, a veterans maximum and health benefits were the three main issues that were resolved.
Larry Landon, executive director of the St. Catharines, Ontario-based PHPA, did not return calls seeking comment. An associate said Landon was in Hamilton, Ontario, on PHPA business.
The PHPA represents more than 1,400 players on 59 teams in the American Hockey League and ECHL, the official name of the league that combined the former East Coast and West Coast hockey leagues in the summer.
In separate letters to the PHPA, Don Fehr and Gene Upshaw, the top player representatives for Major League Baseball and the National Football League, respectively, vowed reinforce PHPA picket lines with their own members.
Landon has told the Sun that the breakthrough meeting between him and McKenna occurred two Fridays ago in Syracuse, a neutral ground halfway between St. Catharines and Princeton, N.J., the location of the ECHL headquarters.
"That allowed us to get back on track," Landon said, "and discuss the specifics."
According to McKenna, subsequent face-to-face sessions took place in Syracuse last Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, involving additional league and union officials, outside counsel and players.
The overall deal was reached late Saturday night, McKenna said from his Princeton office. Further details were clarified, and each organization called its constituents for a vote.
The ECHL board of governors ratified the pact Monday, McKenna said, and the league received confirmation, via fax, that the PHPA had followed suit Tuesday morning.
"Our results were overwhelming," McKenna said. "And I think there was a similar response by the players. That's important. Both sides have something they can look to positively."
The players had wanted a salary floor of $8,500 a week, per team, but they settled on $8,000, with a cap of $10,000. The ECHL, in turn, agreed to extend enhanced players' health benefits a few more weeks, through the end of June.
"Obviously, we're a seasonal industry, so we didn't want to give in on that," McKenna said of the players' interest in year-round coverage. "But, basically, we came back with a program that is better for the players and their families."
Players had also wanted to eliminate a veteran rule in which each team would be allowed a maximum of four players with at least 250 games of professional experience.
Instead, 288 games was reached as a compromising figure to determine veteran status. In the third year of the deal, that will drop to 260. This season, the ECHL has a 72-game schedule.
"It's a developmental league for young players, and we want to have hungry kids who want to improve their skills and move up to the highest levels," McKenna said. "We need some mechanism to allow that to happen. We don't want to be a destination league.
McKenna said regular turnover will produce competitive hockey and the detailed contract that the past few weeks of negotiations produced will be the most important element from the strike.
"The (previous) agreement wasn't well-written," McKenna said. "A lot of areas were left to subjectivity. We tried to expound on those areas to make sure both parties knew what they meant, and we added items to make things smoother. There will be less grief in the future."
Later Tuesday afternoon, McKenna, during a media teleconference, denied an accusation that ECHL owners had benefited most from their new deal with the players.
"I think both (parties) feel it's fair and is certainly something we can live with."
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