Q&A with ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna

As with all minor league sports, the ECHL took a big hit last year from the tough economy, as two teams folded in the middle of the season and three more ceased operations at the end of the year. However, with a quality on-ice product and two new teams in Toledo and Kalamazoo next year, ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna says the league is strong. He was gracious enough to grant us an interview to discuss the league, its future, and the NHL’s involvement.

This year’s Kelly Cup Final had South Carolina against Alaska. What was that like?

Well, it turned out to be a terrific series. Obviously when it goes seven games, I think six out of the seven games were basically one goal games, including some empty netters, and whenever the seventh game goes down to 34 or 35 seconds left before the empty net goal was scored in that one to wrap things up for South Carolina, it was a very, very good series. Some terrific hockey, two very evenly matched teams, and the atmosphere in the buildings, especially games 5, 6, and 7 was just electric.

It was a great showcase for our league and certainly a terrific final.

I’ve been to a playoff game in South Carolina and it’s a great arena and the fans are very passionate.

Absolutely. I know they were a little disappointed they didn’t win it on home ice in Game 5, but certainly I think the teams were very evenly matched, so it was good for the fans in Alaska to see the final two games up there and win there as well.

There are two new teams coming into the ECHL next year, right?

We have Toledo returning after a two-year hiatus where their old building, The Sports Arena, met the wrecking ball, and they’re building a new downtown facility, Lucas County Arena, which is within a couple blocks of the baseball stadium in downtown Toledo. The hockey team, the Walleye, will be owned and operated by the same group that operates the Toledo Mudhens, so certainly they’ve got a very good handle on the sports fans in the Toledo market and with a brand new building, and the built-in base of fans that I think were there that previously followed the Storm for a number of years, we’re really looking forward to a very pleasant return to Toledo this fall.

And the other addition, about two-and-a-half hours up the road from Toledo in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Wings will join the ECHL this year. Again, a very traditional hockey market. They’ve had hockey in Kalamazoo for I think 35 years in one league or another, and from a geographic point of view, it makes sense. We’ve got a very, very strong ownership group there and they own the team, arena, and adjacent practice facility, so it really sets up well for us and I think it will be a very nice addition for us.

So, do you think you’ll continue to add teams that are mainly from traditional, proven hockey markets?

We look at a combination of things. We look at the market, obviously, in terms of population base and demographics, the arena, and the lease in the arena is also important. Typically for us, mid-size markets, somewhere in the range of 250,000 to 600-or-700,000 in population in the draw area, which is typically a 30 or 40 mile radius, and a mid-size facility, which typically seems to work best for us. And the third and most important point is strong ownership with a good business plan and good day-to-day management. We’ll weigh all those factors as we move forward.

Right now, we’d certainly like to add a couple markets in the South and a couple in the West, but we also want to do that in a very deliberate fashion, especially in the current economy. We want to make sure we’re comfortable with the market and comfortable with the ownership group and they’ve got a business plan that we think can sustain for the long-term and there’s proper lead time or startup time when we go into the market, and usually if we handle it in that fashion, we have a much better chance to succeed.

Is that why the ECHL just started the 24-team limit?

Yes. Right now at 20 [teams] this year, and like I said, we’d like to be back to 24. There’s no time frame for that. Certainly, anything that would happen now would be for the 2010-11 season or beyond, but just looking at our geography now, certainly a couple teams in the South and a couple in the West would make sense, but that doesn’t mean we’re ruling out certain geography. If there are good opportunities that come our way, we’ll certainly look at them.

Even though there are junior leagues to compete with, has the ECHL considered expansion into Canada?

We have not ruled it out. We have the one team in Victoria and that’s worked very well for us. They’ve accepted ECHL hockey and Victoria has a good working relationship with both Manitoba in the American League and Vancouver in the National Hockey League. That market again seemed to make sense for us. They had a brand new building and a strong ownership group, so we decided to try it and it worked well. If other markets make sense from a geographic point of view, we would look at it on a market-by-market basis, but there is no master plan to move north and be more involved in a division or that sort of thing. I think when we look to Canada, it’s so dominated by major junior hockey that most of the markets that would fit our model in terms of population and size of building already have a major junior team in their town, so I think it would be limited opportunity for us under the circumstance.

Moving forward, do you see more NHL involvement with the league?

I think so. Earlier this week, I visited the American Hockey League meetings and made a presentation to their board, and last year we had a record number of recalls to the American Hockey League, record number of players — 315 players — played games in both the American League and the ECHL this year. And we had a record number of former ECHL players make their debut with NHL teams this year — 52. And of those 52, eight played games in both the ECHL and NHL this season, so in some cases, that step between our league and the ECHL is getting shorter. I think it speaks to the level of credibility our league has taken on over the last 5, 6, 7 years as a development league, and as a result, NHL teams are now more confident in assigning players and using our league as a development tool, which I think is a good thing.

So, it’s a team by team decision, both in our league and obviously at the NHL-AHL level, to take the level of involvement they have, but in general we’re seeing the relationship grow and it’s a good thing for us. It’s going to be difficult moving forward in some instances for us with 20 teams to continue to supply a 29, 30-team American Hockey League, so I think that’s another reason why some gradual expansion for us again in the future is going to be important to keep the relationship moving forward.

So do you think more NHL teams will try to own ECHL franchises?

Yeah, I would think over time we may see some, but I don’t see a massive trend in that area. I don’t think we’re ever going to progress to the level that you have in minor league baseball, where the major league team owns and supplies the American League, or the AA or AAA level, and fully stock them with players. I think you might see a gradual increase in the number of players at our level that are affiliated or in fact contracted and assigned to our league, but I don’t think you’ll get to a level where it will be supplying full rosters for us.

And that’s okay, because at our level, it also gives our teams, our coaches the opportunity to have some affiliated players, obviously good, young talented players, but also gives them the opportunity to go out and recruit and trade, sign players that they think they need to be able to build their own roster and put a competitive product on the ice that will satisfy their fans. So I think from that point of view, it probably gives us the best of both worlds.

The ECHL has tested some new rules before the AHL or NHL put them into effect. Are there any plans for changes like that this season?

Nothing major for next year, but we have in the past done some experimentation and worked with those leagues. A lot of the things, whether it’s by their request or just by our lead, like ourselves along with the old IHL were the first leagues to use the shootout, which again was very non-traditional, but then over a period of time, eventually the American League and finally the NHL adopted that. We were the first league to mandate visors, and then the American League and other leagues followed suit. There have been a number of those sort of innovations I think that we’ve been involved with and we’ll continue to look in the future to see if there are things that could be done to enhance player safety or the rules of the game and make it a little bit more entertaining.

Back to last season, two teams (Fresno and Augusta) folded in the middle of the season. Was that a surprise or were you kind of expecting that?

I think in both cases it was a surprise. We certainly didn’t have a long view that something was going to happen. I think in both cases, we knew that the teams were going through a difficult time, but to have somebody fold like that mid-season is totally unprecedented. It hasn’t happened in the 22 year history of the league. We don’t anticipate that happening again in the future, so from that point of view, it was difficult in terms of rescheduling and teams losing some of their home dates, and also it makes travel a little bit more difficult.

So, it was very disappointing. We understood why it happened in both cases. It was probably more a factor of the larger economy, where the owners just couldn’t continue to put the top time and effort and money into the hockey teams. They felt that they had to dedicate those resources to their main businesses that they were operating, and as a result, they decided to walk away from hockey.

We’ve made some internal changes in our requirements which will hopefully prevent that from happening in the future, but it was a difficult event for us to go through, but we learned from it and hopefully we’ll do things a little bit differently moving forward.

In general, obviously the league is strong and the quality on the ice is very good, but when you have a league of 20, 25, 30 teams, there’s always going to be some of those teams that aren’t doing as well as you’d like, and when teams struggle, even in a good economy, certainly when a recession like this comes along, it’s enough to push them over the edge.

Do you think there’s any chance of the league going back to some of these defunct markets?

I don’t see Augusta in the near future. I think Fresno would certainly be a market that under the right circumstances we would like to go back to. There are some other ones in places like Greenville, Richmond, VA, Greensboro, NC, San Diego, Fresno, some of those markets make sense. If there’s an interested ownership group, if there’s a good business plan and proper lead time, I think all those markets would be of interest to us in the future.

Can you update us on the status of the Columbia and Reno franchises?

In both cases, it’s going to be dependent on the construction of new facilities. We got a positive update from the folks in Columbia at our recent meetings in terms of their progress. We’re anticipating additional news here very shortly, and hopeful that we’ll get some positive news there. If that happens, there’s still an opportunity for the 2010-11 season in Columbia.

As it relates to Reno, there won’t be anything for the 2010-11 season. There are still two different projects being discussed there. However, that’s more likely for the 2011-12 season.

Again, in both cases, we like the markets, we like how they fit with our current geography, but we’re at the mercy of the arena situation in both cases. If they can get their arena projects done, certainly we think they make good sense.

I know there was some arena difficulty for a team in Myrtle Beach. Is that pretty much dead now?

Myrtle Beach is dead. That’s now an open market. They weren’t able to, despite many different attempts, were not able to get the arena coming out of the ground, so decided to turn in the membership and we understand that. We certainly appreciate the efforts that Fred DuBard and his group of people put forth over the years to try to make it happen, but unfortunately they weren’t successful.

What is a really successful or creative promotion that teams in the ECHL have done?

Lately, I think one of the things that has really surprised us is the whole phenomenon of the Pink in the Rink. Promotion, yes, but a promotion of a very, very good cause, fundraising and raising a level of awareness for cancer and cancer research. We got involved with it 3 or 4 years ago by a couple of teams and now it’s spread to virtually every team in the league and we’re seeing record amounts of money being raised for those causes and also record crowds in a lot of our buildings. We had sellouts in places like Alaska, Stockton, and various other markets for those nights, which I think obviously is just great for the teams and great for those causes and the communities that they’re in as well. That’s something that as a league, we’re very proud of and hope to continue over the next upcoming years to not only support it but to grow that cause. I think our teams have donated about $1.2 million to cancer research and awareness over the past three seasons.

Thanks again to Brian McKenna for taking the time to talk with us. The 2009-10 ECHL season gets underway October 15.