Columnist Ron Kantowski: Return of NHL should only help ECHL

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 9:51 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

The last time a bunch of hockey general managers convened out at Lake Las Vegas, which was about this time last year, the NHL wound up cancelling its season.

It was a little different this week as the ECHL (which lists the Las Vegas Wranglers among its plethora of card-carrying members) and its board of governors were breaking up their golf games -- er, annual meetings -- at the Hyatt Regency.

That was the anecdote I used to, um, break the ice with ECHL commissioner Brian McKenna in the hotel sitting area. He laughed, but it was one of those nervous laughs, sort of like when Dennis Miller makes an obscure reference and you want to disguise that you missed the punch line.

That's because when the NHL suffers, so do all the other HLs, at least indirectly.

"It does have an impact from a business point of view," said McKenna, who, it should be noted, was wearing a dark business suit instead of a golf shirt. That may explain why the ECHL is coming off another moderately successful season that probably would have been an even bigger success had the puck not stopped in the board room during the NHL's futile labor negotiations.

After the holidays, it became apparent that other than Wayne and Garth out in the driveway, the only hockey that was going to be played was of the minor-league variety.

"We saw almost a straight-lining of our attendance the second half of the year," McKenna said. "At Christmas, we were up about 5-6 percent over the prior year. After it became evident and the NHL, in fact, announced that they weren't going to be playing, our attendance leveled off as well at what traditionally is the best time of the year for us.

"Some of it had to do with the fact the NHL wasn't playing. It wasn't in the media, it wasn't on TV and I think to a degree, a lot of fans just lost interest."

But McKenna said the residents of Mystery, Alaska, and the MacKenzie Brothers aren't the only ones encouraged by reports that an NHL labor settlement is imminent, even if the average sports fan stopped paying attention a long time ago.

"Their ability to get a deal done, hopefully in the very near future, is going to be positive for everyone (in hockey)," McKenna said.

That supposedly would include the Wranglers, although McKenna said he is more than happy with the following the 2-year-old expansion franchise has built and nurtured at the well-appointed Orleans Arena.

He said the ECHL model of providing family entertainment at a reasonable price seems to have caught on in the desert, or should I say caught on a second time. Before they both went the way of the hip check, the Las Vegas Thunder and the IHL showed during a six-year run in the 1990s that a cold weather sport can survive in a warm-weather town, provided player salaries are kept reasonable and your arena rent isn't like landing on Boardwalk with two hotels.

"We're satisfied and encouraged," said McKenna, the former director of hockey operations for the NHL's Ottawa Senators who is embarking on his fourth season as ECHL commissioner. "Their (attendance) numbers went up, slightly, over the first year. Typically, the first-year honeymoon period will be a big year and then history will show it levels off or even declines slightly.

"They went in the other direction, which is good, particularly in light of the fact they didn't make the playoffs."

The Wranglers were sixth among the 28 ECHL teams in attendance with a 5,193 average. That was up a bit from the 4,981 the team averaged in its debut season and significantly up from the league average of 4,004.

No doubt, the marketing creativity of Wranglers vice president Billy Johnson and his staff helped sustain interest in the team, even when it wasn't clicking on the power play -- who knew that a Monday night game starting at midnight would draw a nice crowd? But not everything the Wranglers threw against the wall -- or into the boards -- worked.

For instance, when I brought up the name of former NHL serial high-sticker Billy Tibbetts, who the Wranglers brought in to either light a fire in the clubhouse or burn it down, McKenna winced as if his skates were laced too tight.

But Tibbetts eventually was banished from the league, and the Orleans Arena and its plasma concourse monitors are still standing. The viability of the Wranglers and that of the West Coast teams in general is particularly pleasing to McKenna, because he is the one who adopted Westward Ho as a battle cry.

Until two years ago, the ECHL stood for East Coast Hockey League because that's where all of its teams were located. Now, ECHL officially stands for nothing, although Every City Hockey League might be more like it, in that the league has gone coast-to-coast with a current roster of 27 franchises, down from a high of 31.

McKenna might want to hit up Horace Greeley for the price of a season ticket as three more Western U.S. teams -- Phoenix, Utah and Stockton, Calif. -- will begin play this winter. The Phoenix and Utah teams will even go by their old IHL nicknames of Roadrunners and Grizzlies, perhaps rekindling a couple of old Las Vegas hockey rivalries in the process.

It was decided during the meetings here that the 11 Western teams will be aligned in two divisions with the five California teams -- San Diego, Fresno, Bakersfield, Long Beach and Stockton -- forming the Pacific Division and Las Vegas, Phoenix, Utah, Boise, Alaska and Victoria, B.C., competing in the West.

The new alignment should reduce travel expenses for the Wranglers, who will be required to make just one four-game trip back East and fewer excursions to the Pacific Division hinterlands.

"Utah is a bus trip for Vegas, as is Phoenix," McKenna said. "Plus, it brings on board a couple of the old (IHL) rivalries, so we're excited about that."

In addition, four teams from each division or eight of the 11 Western teams will make the playoffs. Last year, only four of eight qualified.

From a business standpoint, eight teams in the playoffs is much preferred to four.

Or zero.

That's something the NHL front-office types apparently couldn't figure out here last year before hitting the fairways.

archive