Hockey's Minor Leagues

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Thu May 13, 2010 4:04 pm

I did a massive search for this and I couldn't find anything on this subject at all.

Being in Indiana, we have the Fort Wayne Komets of the IHL and both the Evansville IceMen and Chi-Town Shooters of the AAHL, with both leagues teetering on extinction all season long.

My question is, with the economy the way it is and with teams folding and popping up all over the place, are we at the point right now where the NHL or some other governing body can or should jump in and format all of minor league hockey similar to that of baseball or should we just leave everything alone and have all of these smaller leagues try to survive on their own?

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Thu May 13, 2010 4:07 pm

Can the NHL properly manage itself, never mind managing the minor leagues?

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Thu May 13, 2010 4:15 pm

That's a fantastic point. I think that goes back to the possibility of being too large and/or the fact that the NHL is in markets that maybe they shouldn't be in.

Does the NHL need to be in the Sun Belt? Probably. Does the NHL need to be in all 10 of those markets (Anaheim, San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa Bay, Phoenix and Carolina)? That's a different debate.

I think that if the NHL was smaller and in the right areas, then not only could the NHL become more involved with the minor leagues, but the product up at the top would be much better over the course of the entire season and not just the playoffs AND the product at the minor league levels would be better than the current state.

The Hutch · Post by **The Hutch** » Thu May 13, 2010 11:30 pm

There's a huge differential between hockey and baseball, as far as prospects are concerned. MLB can and should have control over the minors because they have players o'plenty to disperse across the continent. The NHL has way fewer prospects per team, and have a lot of influence in the AHL, which is where they channel their players before making it to the show.

The most glaring difference though is that baseball pretty much drafts exclusively from the school system, so any and all minor leagues are dedicated specifically to the developmental system.

Minor league teams flip flopping locations seems to always be the way it's going to happen. Even the AHL will never seem to sit on a steady roster of cities.

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Fri May 14, 2010 3:19 pm

I'll agree with the draft. There are many more players across the globe that play baseball meaning they can have a 40 plus round draft.

Do you think that they could take all of the players that are playing in the minors and have a dispersal draft?

Speaking of minor league teams, how about your Abbotsford Heat? Do they draw well, despite being so far away from any other team?

The Hutch · Post by **The Hutch** » Sat May 15, 2010 3:58 am

Baseball benefits from the school system. Every college/university, and I am sure almost every high school as well, fields a team. It's a much more cost efficient sport to play, as compared to how much money it costs each individual player to play hockey.

The idea of a layered minor league development system is intriguing. The first thing that would be required for the sake of balance is either more teams in each league that exists now (The IHL only have seven teams) or more leagues spread out across the continent.

The Abbotsford Heat do well, given the circumstances. The team was only approved on April 28th of last year, which gave them only a handful of months to promote the team and gain local interest. A lot of locals, my father included, were stubborn on the idea because it would be a Calgary affiliate in a Vancouver market.

The arena seats 7,018 (Can be expanded to 8,500) and the only sellouts were when the Manitoba Moose came to town, which had an effect on the year's average. We ranked 23rd in the league for attendance with 3,897.

Given the circumstances, I would say they did fairly well. I'm hoping that they'll build on this start and have increases success next season.

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Sun May 16, 2010 8:18 pm

I couldn't agree more on the cost efficiency part. I know that when I was in school (seems like decades ago) baseball cost around $300-$400 to play, whereas hockey was $2200 per season. Today, that latter number is closer to $3K.

I don't think that there necessarily needs to be more teams in the leagues that there are now. It wouldn't hurt to have more teams, but if there could be teams moved and leagues formatted to make it so that there would be an equal number of teams at each level that might be an easier way to go.

We might be looking at something like this:

NHL 30
AHL 30
ECHL 20 and LNAH 10
CHL 23 (see below) and SPHL 7

There is a rumor that may see the 7 team IHL shrink to 5 and those teams would be looking at the CHL and forming a new division.

Glad to see that the Heat are doing so well. I wondered how some people would take the fact that the Flames affiliate would be in Canucks territory.

I know the minor league team in Fort Wayne is having problems with the IHL. They draw around 7500-8000 a night, although last night was a 10,500 sellout for game 5 against Flint. Sometimes I think that they're too big for the league and they should join the ECHL.

Post by **Manimal** » Sun May 16, 2010 9:24 pm

Laker2415 wrote: I know the minor league team in Fort Wayne is having problems with the IHL. They draw around 7500-8000 a night, although last night was a 10,500 sellout for game 5 against Flint. Sometimes I think that they're too big for the league and they should join the ECHL.

The Komets pretty much rule the IHL. They do whatever they want and gets the league to follow just because of the Franke's money. THey would not like it as much in the ECHL beacuase they would not have total control

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Sun May 16, 2010 10:33 pm

Manimal wrote:
The Komets pretty much rule the IHL. They do whatever they want and gets the league to follow just because of the Franke's money. THey would not like it as much in the ECHL beacuase they would not have total control

If I has a dollar for every time I heard that, I might consider buying an IHL team that the Franke's will want to put in some city, town, village just to keep the IHL afloat.

The problem is that they (the Frankes), don't want to join a unionized league, which goes hand and hand with the total control. I've felt bad for Dennis Hextall all season long and I believe that he was just thrown into the commissioner role by the Frankes. It seemed as though every major announcement wasn't made by Hextall, but rather a Franke family member and that shows me just how much control that the family really has, not only with their team, but the IHL as well.

Now, if you ask a member of the fan base here in Fort Wayne, they'll tell you that this is the greatest league in the world and the Franke's are awesome and we're (the IHL) much better than the ECHL and we don't need a better league to put our product on the ice, etc.

It all just makes me sick.

Post by **Manimal** » Sun May 16, 2010 11:24 pm

I think the IHL should fold. There is too much uncertainty around everything. I've heard from several fans that they're watching the AAHL instead, even if it's inferior hockey.

Laker2415 · Post by **Laker2415** » Sun May 16, 2010 11:38 pm

I agree that the IHL should fold. Will it? Probably not. I think that the Franke's will flash money at a few people and there will be a couple expansion teams joining.

We had an AAHL game here in Fort Wayne between Battle Creek and Evansville in February and something like 3,300 people showed up for it. The reaction was mixed, some liked it but most hated it.