Haines, MAHL learning from mistakes

CANTON, Ohio — The difference between success and failure is best described as a very thin line. Being able to turn a failed attempt at doing something into a success takes skill and a willingness to learn from mistakes made. When the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League drops the puck to open season two, it will be a testament to the will of founder/president Andrew Haines, who refused to let the missteps that caused the league to shut down last season keep him from pressing forward. “It would have been so much easier to shut it down completely,” Haines said. “I could have just filed for bankruptcy and been done with it but that’s not the route I want to go.” The MAHL is not Haines’ first foray into the world of professional sports. In fact, it is his third stop around what might be considered the “four majors”. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania native and founder of Biz Sellers was the first owner of the then-American Basketball Association member Maryland NightHawks team. Later, he went on to found the American Indoor Football League (AIFL) which is now part of the AIFA. There was just one thing wrong with running a football team and league: the cost. “I had a lot of fun and a great product. The challenge was for the owners to make money and I was looking for a sport that had a lower risk than indoor football did,” he said. “I started looking at all the different sports out there and came up with hockey as the best choice. The facilities are already in place. The number of games is a huge factor – there’s more games and the budgets are really a little bit less than football. Your per game cost is about one-fourth of what it would be for football which means a quarter of the attendance (of a football game) is what you need to make money.” By his own admission, Haines did not know much, if anything, about hockey. In a way, he thought that would be an advantage in that he could keep from getting too wrapped up in being a fan to ignore the business side of the sport. “I’m not a hockey guy. It allows me to focus on the business side and not get caught up in the hockey,” he said. “I got caught up in the football a little too much because it was my passion.” Deciding that a pro hockey league would be his next venture, Haines set about making it happen. Haines and his assembled team began looking for locations to put franchises in. They chose the northeast area of the country, realizing that despite the numerous teams in various leagues, there were no true professional “developmental” leagues to feed the double-A level. Over the course of a year, cities were identified, leases were signed and the process began. Setting up the franchises took a lot longer that Haines thought it would. As the intended start date for the season grew closer, it wore down his patience and caused him to make some decisions that were less than perfect. “To be honest, it was a little tougher than I thought getting things lined up and secured and what have you. It hurt us last year not having enough time to market and promote the teams,” he said. “To be honest, some of the things I forced. We needed x number of teams to play, which I thought we needed to play. When you are kind of forced like that, you tend to make bad decisions.” When the season started, the MAHL was comprised of five teams spread from Jamestown, New York to Wooster, Ohio. They all were playing in small buildings which everyone involved thought would hold costs down and enable the teams to be closer to financial stability. The league was not able to obtain H2B work visas for foreign players so they brought in American players, many of whom were as talented as their Canadian and European counterparts. As it turned out, the combination of location and talent made the MAHL a fertile ground from which teams in the ECHL and CHL reached into on multiple occasions. “When it came down to it, I think the double-A teams out there took us seriously in the fact that we had so many guys called up,” Haines said. “With all the shortcomings that we had, I think we were very, very successful with the player development side of it.” The season started and the Indiana Ice Miners proved to be the beast of the league, winning a record 26 consecutive games at one point. Players were being noticed and called up. All seemed well when in actuality it wasn’t. From the start, Haines was operating not only the league but the five teams as well. The financial strain was quite significant and became worse when the league was not able to find local ownership groups for every franchise before the first of the year. When issues with collecting monies owed to the league and the teams surfaced, Haines was left searching for options. “The tough part last year was that I owned five teams at the start of the season. That was probably the one thing I was not expecting. I was expecting to have (local) ownership in place,” Haines said. “Where we fell short was, it all comes down to money. I ran out of money plain and simple.” Things went from bad to worse when teams began missing payrolls. The situation came to a head on February 12, 2008 when Haines called a league wide conference call to discuss options. According to Haines, there was a way to end the season earlier than scheduled and still have a post-season championship but his sentiment was not shared by the others involved. “It wasn’t my choice. My proposal, I did call a conference call because of the issues that not only I was having. I mean, I wasn’t the only person financially responsible for teams but I knew my position so I called a meeting because I proposed that we shorten the season not drastically like we did. I wanted to propose – I did propose on the conference call with all the owners and GM’s and coaches that we start a playoff, have our playoffs and championship and wrap things up in I think it was like 2 ½ weeks,” he said. “We had other people that figured just end it right now. We voted and not one person opposed ending it that day. We took the input from the coaches and the GM’s and Ken Kolpien and the guys from Mon Valley. What was frustrating, I guess you could say, was after we made the announcement and for some people to say they were against that that were on that call, that’s what bothered me more than anything to make it sound like I just called everybody and said ‘season’s done’ because we were prepared to continue playing.” So the season was over but Haines vowed to regroup and bring the MAHL back in the fall of 2008. The question was how would he do it. Next: Has the MAHL learned from its mistakes? Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com