ORLANDO, Fla. – Aretha Franklin sang about it. Professional athletes crave it as validation of their skills. Minor league teams need it to build credibility. Leagues and associations want it to survive. “It” is respect and the big question seems to be whether it can be considered an entitlement or a product of doing things the right way. In the world of minor league sports, the line between “deserving” and “earning” can be very thin. Just take a look at the single-A level of hockey. Although not perfect, the five-year old Southern Professional Hockey League seems to be the measure of the single-A level league that has earned respect. It hasn’t been easy but the league has weathered its share of issues and it has paid off quite well. When the league started back in 2004 (a product of the merging of the SEHL 
and the WHA2/EHL), eight teams – Knoxville (TN), Columbus (GA), Fayetteville (NC), Huntsville (AL), Jacksonville (FL), Macon (GA), Asheville (NC) and Winston-Salem (NC) – skated their blades off for appreciative fans. Since then, there have been two full-time commissioners (Tom Coolen and Jim Combs) and one Board of Governors chairman (Huntsville’s Keith Jeffries) who was a de-facto commissioner. Five cities (Jacksonville, Asheville, Macon, Florence SC and Kissimmee FL) have had teams that failed. One city (Winston-Salem) had a team fail only to take in another team three seasons later. Add in the rebirth of hockey in Richmond, Virginia and what is left is a six team circuit that is for the most part solid and ready to talk expansion. The SPHL maintains a budget model that operates between $900,000 and $1.2 million. Included in that is a $5,600 per week salary cap that pays the 18 roster players. Even with the present economic downturn, the teams have been able to keep ticket prices affordable. In turn, four of the six teams (Huntsville, Fayetteville, Knoxville and Richmond) are averaging over 3,000 per game with Columbus not far behind at 2,871. The lone attendance trouble spot is Twin City (Winston-Salem) which, although the numbers have been improving, is still averaging just over 1,000 per game. It took a couple of season but the SPHL has gained a reputation, especially in the ECHL and the CHL, as a resource for talent. Dozens of SPHL players have seen time upstairs, some for a game or two, others for much more. Just this year, Huntsville goalie Tim Haun was called up to Fort Wayne in the IHL and has been there for almost three months. Columbus net minder Ian Vigier has been playing games for the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL almost every weekend since December. Both have acquitted themselves very well. The credibility has gone up every year and now that two SPHL coaches (Scott Hillman in Knoxville and Eric Soltys in Huntsville) have ties to the CHL, the number of players getting call-ups has the potential to skyrocket. Many of the players have become icons. Knoxville’s Kevin Swider had led the league every year in scoring. Former teammate Mike Craigen was the perfect role player on the ice and drew in many fans with his blog in the Knoxville News-Sentinel . Matt Carmichael was the unofficial “mayor” of Huntsville. Allan Sirois has been the face of Cyclones (both Pee Dee and Twin City) hockey for years. Every player in the league is involved with charity and community outreach work, making them heroes both on and off the ice. The league made a big step when it hired Scott Brand, USA Hockey’s Coordinator of Officiating Development as its Director of Officials. The move allowed Commissioner Combs to have the time to work on league issues (including expansion) while deepening the bond between the SPHL and USA Hockey. The relationship is important since USA Hockey works closely with other pro leagues, including the NHL, and fosters more cooperation across league (and level) lines. Is the SPHL perfect? Most league insiders will tell you no and that it will always be a work in progress. Even so, when one compares where the league was in 2004 and where it is now, it has earned every bit of respect that it currently carries. One of the two new entries into the single-A world, the All-American Hockey Association, is currently in its inaugural season. Like the SPHL in its early days, the issues and problems exist. Unfortunately for the AAHA, they don’t seem to be going away. Born out of the failure of the MAHL and the delayed startup of the MWHL, the AAHA was formed in September of 2008 and started play less than two months later in November. League officials cobbled together the four team league in order to keep the commitments made by some of the teams who expected to play in the other two organizations. In the interest of time, league officials chose to forgo things like franchise fees and in-depth background checks on ownership groups. It would prove to be a questionable move. The AAHA business model was what looked like a scaled-down version of the SPHL blueprint. Choosing to play in rinks that appeared to be recreational rinks, one general manager was quoted as 
believing that a team could be run for $250,000. To date, only the Evansville (IN) Icemen have been able to reach capacity, averaging an announced attendance of over 1,000. Less than a month into the season, the Battle Creek Revolution team had to be bailed out by an ownership shakeup. Andrew Miller, the initial majority owner, was replaced by Dr. Joe Burkhardt (the Revs’ team doctor) and financial broker Richard Williams (father of one of the players). A third member of the new ownership was reported to be Joe Kolodziej, the president of Hockey Talent Management – an AAHA corporate partner. League officials insist that Kolodziej is simply a league consultant but questions persist about the extent of his involvement. While the Battle Creek situation was being fixed, the Detroit Dragons were falling apart at the seams. Tim and Matt Mitchell, the owners of the Dragons, were missing player payrolls, rink payments and other financial responsibilities. After failing to find a new owner who would take on the Mitchell’s accrued debt, the AAHA was forced to disband the franchise. In its place, the Chicago Blaze – an expansion team set to join for the 2009-2010 season – were activated and assumed the Dragons’ road schedule. The AAHA now lists all Detroit home games as forfeit victories for the visiting team. One of the most interesting days in the young history of the AAHA came on January 22. On that day, Battle Creek owner Burkhardt fired coach Matt Wiedenhoeft, assistant coach Kyle Gletow and player/assistant Nigel Hawryliw and replaced them with team captain Mark Allen as the new player/Head Coach. At the same time, the Chi-Town Shooters were announcing that General Manager Rich Greene was being fired and being replaced by Game Day Coordinator Jerry Unold. The AAHA has also had problems on the ice, namely the number of line brawls that have occurred during and at the end of games. The most celebrated of these was a pair of incidents on the weekend of January 17-18. In the first game of a home-and-home series, Evansville and Chi-Town had a huge brawl as the final buzzer sounded. The next day, Chi-Town Head Coach/Managing Partner Darren Seid decided to dress and play. He was the instigator in a brawl with just over two minutes remaining in the contest. By the end of the fracas, Seid, having been stripped of his jersey and shoulder pads, was challenging several Icemen on the ice and getting no takers, skated over to the Evansville bench and invited the boys out to play. It was straight out of “Slap Shot”, only this wasn’t Killer or even the Hansons. The AAHA suspended Seid for the remainder of the season and playoffs, only to backtrack and commute the sentence down to not allowing Seid to play at all, suspending him for eight games behind the bench and allowing him to continue his ownership duties without missing a beat. The fans of the league began losing respect in the association early on as the problems in Detroit began to surface. The mistrust hit a high point when a weekend home-and-home between Detroit and Battle Creek was called off. The league issued a statement that hazardous travel conditions cause by dense fog was the issue. In fact, the fog cleared well in advance of what would have been Detroit’s departure time. According to former Dragons coach Steve Shannon, the league had been informed the prior day that due to the financial crisis in Detroit (both he and his players were owed significant money), the team would not be playing that weekend. No retraction of the dense fog release was made. The animosity hit a new crescendo recently when the league-run fan message board was taken down. Coincidentally, the removal occurred within a day or two of the posting of hyperlinks to other websites with information on the past dealings of Kolodziej, most of which were not flattering or even positive in nature. One of the fans started an “unofficial” site which lasted only two days before the comments about Kolodziej resurfaced and the site host (which just happened to be the same one as the league’s web material) was forced to remove it. This coming from the league that allowed a “very passionate” Detroit fan to Photoshop a fake Associated Press story in the Detroit News about Battle Creek player Kevin Demers in which it was suggested that Demers could either “move to Canada or take his own life” rather than face the Dragons. The story and its message board thread stayed up for more than a week as the association felt it was a free speech issue and that no harm was being done by it. The AAHA has had some successes. Within the first month, a handful of players were called up to teams in the IHL, which is located very close to the AAHA’s “footprint”. In the area of marketing, the Shooters invited former NFL player and current radio personality John “Jurko” Jurkovic to skate with them for a game. Jurkovic actually picked up an assist in the contest. Presently, Evansville has Kira Hurley, the fourth female to suit up and play in men’s pro hockey, on its roster. In her first pro appearance, she stopped eight of eleven shots thrown her way. Unfortunately the positives have been outweighed by the negatives. Only time will tell whether the AAHA will survive, let alone gain accolades. The other new kid on the block, the Eastern Professional Hockey League, has somehow managed to stay far enough under the radar to avoid many of the AAHA’s issues. Founded by long time hockey man Jim Riggs, the EPHL is trying to fill the role of developmental league in the Northeast corridor. Playing out of arenas very similar to those in the AAHA, the EPHL runs teams on budgets between $600,000 and $700,000. Its salary cap is $5,000 per week for a 17-man roster. The major problems for the EPHL came before the season got underway. Two franchises, the Copper City Chiefs (Rome, NY) and the New Hampshire Freeze (Exeter, NH) never made it to the start line. The league rushed together a team (Hudson Valley Bears) to join the Jersey Rock hoppers (West Orange, NJ), Brooklyn Aces (Brooklyn, NY) and Danbury Mad Hatters (Danbury, CT) as the fourth franchise. The Hudson Valley team actually plays out of two different rinks – one in Poughkeepsie, NY and the other in Newburgh, NY. (The Freeze intend to join in as an active beginning with the 2009-2010 season.) Only two of the teams, Danbury and Brooklyn, have gotten average 
attendance above the 1,000 mark. According to Riggs, depending on the amount of advertising coming in, teams could survive on between 1,200 and 1,400 people per night. Another issue stems from looking at the team info pages. Other than Alan Friedman owning the Brooklyn Aces, the rest of the teams seem to share at least one name. Curt Russell’s name comes up on the Danbury list along with Tim Kolpien and Igor Mrotchek while he is the lone name on the principal owner line for the Jersey squad. Kolpien has direct ties back to Riggs and the league office. No one is really sure who owns the Bears. If Russell is truly extended in multiple directions, the consequences of not bringing in revenue could be costly. The biggest positive news out of the league is the impending expansion to Hyannis, Massachusetts. Riggs has reportedly enlisted the help of former minor league owner David Adams to take the reigns of the Hyannis Storm who, if all goes well, will be playing in a brand new facility come the fall. The league has also had several call-ups to the ECHL with Elmira making several. Very little news has filtered out from the league. There have been some incidents like a public spat between the Hudson Valley coach and ownership which led to the coach’s dismissal and one all-in brawl that saw time on You Tube. Other than that, Riggs, a master of public relations, has played his cards close and no one is really sure where the league stands. At the end of the day, it appears that the SPHL has done the most right and has earned its place in the world of minor league hockey. As for the AAHA and the EPHL, the jury is still out but if they don’t watch their step, getting the respect of fans and hockey people could be the least of their worries. Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
