ORLANDO, Fla. – Jerry Deno is a survivor. A minor league hockey survivor. He’s seen the good times and he’s seen the bad times. He’s had jobs and lost jobs. Through it all, he’s never lost his passion for the game.
His travels have taken him from fandom in the late 1960’s to working for several teams across multiple leagues since 2000. Along the way, he’s seen enough to have his own ideas of what will and won’t work when it comes to developing a team and a league.
This fall, he will get the opportunity once again as he joins the Danbury Whalers of the brand new Federal Hockey League as Director of Game Night Operations. For Deno, he sees an opportunity for single-A hockey to finally succeed in the Northeast part of the country – a place where the trail of failed leagues is quite long.
“My love for this game is unbounded, as my wife will attest to. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved and lose out again. Then they (FHL) explained to me the league structure and I looked over the business plans with six teams,” Deno said. “I spoke with some people I know in the hockey business about Mr. Kirnan (Don Kirnan, founder of the FHL) and they said he was a standup guy and that basically everything he’s touched in hockey has turned to gold. That’s where I am now. I’ve decided to go ahead with Danbury.”
Even though the Northeast corridor has been a hotbed for amateur hockey from youth to juniors (including Kirnan’s Empire / Eastern Junior Hockey League) to college, professional hockey has not gained a foothold below the AHL (or triple-A) level.
“I think that one of the problems is that there has always been AHL hockey in the Northeast and people might have been a little spoiled by the level of play and just a general feeling of the AHL, which is just about as close to the NHL as you can get,” Deno said.
Deno believes that now may be the time for another foray into pro hockey because fans have proven that the college game sells and that they are ready for something more.
“In my opinion, people are becoming a bit more savvy with their hockey knowledge. If you look at Vermont, the University of Vermont Catamounts have a fantastic hockey following. They sell out all the time. You look at Boston College. You look at the University of Maine. These colleges are selling tickets. They have great hockey programs. I think people are looking for the next step up from college,” he said. “I’ve been to Quinnipiac University games. I’ve been to Yale University games and they are fantastic. I love watching these guys play because college kids play with a heart and desire that’s not seen in the AHL or the NHL in my opinion. When you watch a minor league game – and most of my experience is with the UHL (double-A; now known as the IHL) – you see guys that are playing with a lot of heart and a lot of ambition. They want to move up.”
It is that heart and ambition that, in Deno’s opinion, separates players in the lower minors from ones in the AHL or NHL because players in those two leagues have very little to prove and a lot to lose should an injury come along.
“In the AHL, no one wants to hit. No one wants to take a check to the boards. They’re all afraid of getting hurt because they think they’re just one step away from the parent (NHL) club,” he said. “Down in the minor leagues, these guys are willing to play hard. They’re willing to go into the corners for the puck. They’re willing to chase down that icing as fast as they can to try to nullify it. They don’t care because they know that they have to play hard if they’re going to impress someone to say hey, this guy can play, let’s move him up to our level and see what he can do.”
Over the past five or so years, there have been three attempts to start single-A leagues in the region. The first, the MAHL, collapsed midway through its initial season. The EPHL, founded by long-time hockey man Jim Riggs (who is now the general manager of the Bloomington Prairie Thunder in the new CHL/IHL “super league”), teetered on the edge but finished its inaugural season before quietly slipping away. The NEPHL attempted to fill in the space left by the EPHL but unforeseen circumstances (the illness of one of the owners) and some ill-advised thinking led to its implosion a little past the mid point of its first campaign.
In the case of the EPHL, Deno thought that the league failed partially because it did not communicate well with its fans through available vehicles such as the web site. He did see one common thread however that may have doomed both the EPHL and NEPHL to fail: underestimating the resources needed to survive.
“In the EPHL, in my opinion, you had for ownership in the team themselves you had hockey fans with some money. You had youth hockey people with some money that thought they could start a professional league and make it succeed. I think that their theories on how to make a pro league succeed didn’t work because they were the ideas that were used in youth hockey,” Deno said. “With no disrespect to Tim Kolpien or Kurt Russell (owners in the EPHL), their hearts were in the right place but they didn’t have the knowledge they needed and they didn’t get good people around them to help them.
“As far as the NEPHL goes, that again was hockey fans wanting to put a league together. Mr. (Kirk) McDonough (team owner and NEPHL President) is a great guy but he had no knowledge, he didn’t know what he was getting himself into,” Deno said. “He signed a terrible lease with the University of Rhode Island. I mean they were paying $1,200 per game for ice time. You can’t pay that at this level. Things just did not work out for him.”
So now Don Kirnan and the FHL come along to take their shot at making single-A hockey work. Kirnan was involved with the origination of the Empire Junior Hockey League (Eastern Junior Hockey League) more than twenty years ago and it still stands to this day. The fact that that junior league has been successful is not lost on Deno.
“The junior hockey league he (Kirnan) started he started twenty years ago and it has grown enormously. I think he has a pretty good idea what it costs to travel, what it costs to put a team on the road and send them on a five hour drive to play hockey. I think that is important. I just don’t think the previous owners in the previous leagues understood that,” Deno said. “Although I’ve only met him recently, he impresses me as a very knowledgeable man in hockey. He reminds me of Jim Riggs, whom I said before I admire a lot. He’s been doing junior hockey for twenty years and he’s now taking a step up to the pros. It’s no different than a junior player taking a step up to pro. He’s learned his trade and now he’s going to start playing in the pro leagues.”
According to Deno, another thing that Kirnan has learned is patience. The FHL began coming together late last year with the stated goal of kicking off in October, giving its teams ten months to ramp up and do things the right way.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a league take ten months to get set up and going. Everything was announced in January. They feel that they needed that much time to set up everything that they need to be successful – connections, tickets and what have you and I think that’s a great thing,” Deno said. “I’ve never seen a league do that. Most leagues pop up in June or July and they want to start in October or November.”
Deno said that another factor in his decision to join the FHL was the various ownership groups around the league. Whalers’ C.E.O. and General Managing Partner Herm Sorcher started his professional marketing career with the Hartford Whalers. Sorcher wasn’t the only owner he was familiar with.
“I’ve met with several of the owners in this league. I have faith in these people. They are hockey people and I believe that they’re going to put a low-priced, good product on the ice for people to see,” he said. “Alan Friedman (Danbury Whalers’ President and part owner) owned the EPHL Brooklyn Aces. He was very successful because he is a good businessman. He had some knowledge and he knew what he was doing. He had some problems with Mr. McDonough and never ended up in the NEPHL. That’s when Kevin McCabe came in. He put the Brooklyn Aviators in the NEPHL and again, a stand-up guy and a great franchise. They had fans in the seats. They were doing well and that’s why I’m so happy that Kevin has moved into the FHL.”
He also is confident that the FHL will provide hockey fans in the Northeast something that the NHL or for that matter the AHL can’t: an affordable family night out.
“A family of four can go to one of our games, an FHL game, [for] a lot cheaper than you can [to an AHL game]. In other words, it’ll be cheaper to go to Danbury than it would be to go to Bridgeport or Hartford in Connecticut,” he said. “For between $75 and $100, a family of four can come to a game, get the tickets, get a hot dog for the kids, get a souvenir and have a good time. You can’t do that in the AHL and I’m almost certain you can’t do it in the ECHL. When you can come to a Danbury, Brooklyn, Rome, Thousand Islands, Broome County (Binghamton) or a Akwasasne (southern Ontario) game and only spend $100 for a family of four, that’s a night out. That’s something a working man can afford.”
And if minor league hockey is to succeed in the Northeast, it needs men like Jerry Deno to make it work. Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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