FRASER, Mich. – It was supposed to be a “farewell tour” of sorts for Jason Simon. It was supposed to be a return to coaching a pro team in a very familiar building for Steve Shannon. It was supposed to be a father getting to share his son’s dream of being a pro hockey player for Rick Bohlinger. “It” was the inaugural season for the Detroit Dragons hockey team in the brand new All American Hockey Association. Emphasis on the “was” because on Monday, January 5, 2009, the Dragons were sent to the hockey graveyard by a huge debt and lack of enough revenue. What started out as a very promising season turned quickly into another terrible tale of life in the low minors. “People think this (operating a pro hockey team) is an easy situation and its not. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of money,” Shannon said after the announcement. “They asked me to put together a professional hockey team. I put together the best talent available to me and it showed. The product on the ice was good. It’s unfortunate that from a structural standpoint, it wasn’t put together in a better way.” That structure started at the top – the Mitchell family and M & M Unlimited LLC, the ownership group who gave birth to the Dragons. The Mitchells joined the AAHA after the MWHL and MAHL both appeared in September to not be in a position to open their seasons. Knowing full well that time was of the essence, the AAHA didn’t take as much time to check all of the owners as they maybe should have. “When people come together and they’re so excited to get something started and they’re really gung-ho, you kind of, I guess, when it was put together you take people at their word saying this is exactly what they can do,” AAHA Commissioner Bob Langdon said. “I think the biggest problem we had is that not one team had to put up any sort of performance bond or something like that. As an association, we didn’t want teams to come up and say this is your association fee right at the beginning because everyone was just starting out. Next year, there will be an association fee and a performance bond but this year we kind of said we’ll pass on that so that everyone could keep that money and use it as working capital.” As General Manager, Matt Mitchell left the hockey decisions to Shannon while he went off in search of ticket buyers and corporate sponsors. Or so everyone thought. Bohlinger, a father of three hockey players and a former youth player himself, recalled the first time he ran into Tim Mitchell, Matt’s father, at the Great Lakes Sports City after his son Brad joined the team. “I have this unique job where I’m off every other week so I’d go and watch the practices. That’s how I met Tim,” Bohlinger said. “There was a guy in there one week running around painting over the (Motor City) Mechanics logos everywhere in the rink and doing a bunch of odd jobs and he would talk to Matt a lot. He came up to me and said ‘Hi, I’m Tim and I hear you’ve got some media connections and that’. I said I worked for a television station for 11 years and we didn’t leave on the best of terms but I still have a couple of friends there. He said he was Matt’s dad and that they’d appreciate whatever kind of publicity that they could get.” Everyone it seemed was pitching in to help the Dragons’ cause. Simon, a veteran of nearly 20 years in pro hockey, thought it would be one last hurrah for his career to play for Steve Shannon and the Dragons. His family even got involved as the embroidery business they operate was responsible for creating the team’s home and away jerseys at a cost which the Mitchell’s promised to reimburse along with merchandise for the fans to purchase. “I put up the home and away jerseys because the owner said give me a month or so and I’ll take care of you,” Simon said. “I ended up with a bill of $4,000 added on to everything else.” As the season started, by all accounts, everything was going well. Transportation was set. Equipment was available an good. The play on the ice was incredible as the Dragons came out of the gates red hot. The on-ice product, however, was covering up problems, the worst of which may have been the player paychecks starting to bounce around week two. Bohlinger, who had seen the demise of the MAHL over the summer, said he could see some things that were not right. “We had just gone through the MAHL experience and then all of a sudden you start seeing the little things pop up,” he said. “No web site per se. All they had was a dragon on their web site. They had nothing else. No way to contact anybody. No information coming or going. The first game came and nobody showed up and you could see a look of panic in Tim‘s eyes. Nothing was set. They didn‘t even have people selling tickets at the front door. They had no programs. They had nothing.” With no marketing advertising the team to the market and no fans buying tickets and merchandise, the revenue stream became non-existent. The players and Shannon grew increasingly frustrated with the situation. By the time the curtain fell, Simon was angry about what had happened, not to mention how a veteran like himself could be drawn into it. “It’s to a point where I wonder how did I ever get myself into this situation. I’m mad now,” Simon said. “I’m mad at myself for letting me be taken advantage of. I’m mad at myself for being stupid and naïve. I thought I was smarter than this. I shouldn’t have let myself get in so deep.” Shannon put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Mitchells. “We feel we’ve been misled by the Mitchells and pretty much everybody within the organization and the league feel the same way. They had all the excuses but they knew, they were informed (about the criteria to operate a team),” Shannon said. “They just thought they could do it in a different way and it failed.” Still, he was extremely proud of how his players were able to put aside the problems and play at a highly successful level. “That’s one of the things we talked about once this started to become a concern, – which it did very early on – was that although we have some real sincere issues, once we get to the rink let’s block those out and go to work and practice and play hard in the games which they did,” he said. “It shows the character of the individuals that participated. That’s why at the time we were playing we were 10-3. When it came down to playing, we were no nonsense, lets play the game.” For the fans, and especially the families of the players, it was a frightening lesson in the ways of minor league pro sports where nothing is guaranteed and more often than not, those closest to the situation can’t do anything about it. “It’s very hard. Most of these guys are type-A people to begin with. They make their own decisions. To me personally, it was extremely painful because I knew that Brad had given up the ability to go back and play college hockey or anything else because this was a dream that he wanted to play pro hockey and it looked like he wasn’t even going to make the (complete) season,” Bohlinger said. “If he wouldn’t have been good enough, whether he got cut from the team or something like that, it would have been a whole different scenario. (In this case) here you’ve got a team that plays extremely well, has a lot of talent, is doing great and the poor kid is going to basically get bumped out on the street because somebody else didn’t do their homework.” The AAHA did hold a dispersal draft. Evansville selected Mike McRae, Lewis Lanway, Charles Bulbuk and Joe Koslakiewicz. Chi-Town picked Bill Skarczewski, Frank DiCristofaro, Earl Hudick and Ed Hudick. Battle Creek chose Jordan Bowman, Dan Olesky, Simon and Brad Bohlinger. The rest of the players became free agents. None are guaranteed roster spots and if they do earn one, chances are someone else will be sent packing to make room – the final effects of what has been a bad experience for many. As for the association itself, it was decided to activate one of next season’s expansion teams, the Chicago Blaze, as a “traveling squad” to fill the road dates vacated by the Dragons. It seemed to be a better solution than what Evansville had done to fill its two scheduled home games on January 3 and 4: the Icemen took on a “substitute” team wearing jerseys with the letter “D” emblazoned on them (with the Dragons’ franchise being forfeited back to the league, the letter technically could have stood for “Detroit” or “Dragons”). It was a matter of survival, something that Shannon understood all too well. “I don’t think anybody was deliberately trying to pose them as the Detroit Dragons. I just think Evansville was placed in a very difficult situation. They had two home dates that they had to fill out. They had to do something and they did the best they could in a short amount of time,” he said. “I understand that there are a lot of unhappy people out there in our fan base. No one is more disappointed and unhappy than myself, my players and the other teams we were competing against. This wasn’t something we started out to have happen. Chip Rossetti and the Evansville organization did the best they could under very, very difficult circumstances. They did absolutely what they had to do. I wish them well.” Just as the fans wish Shannon and his Dragons well as they drift into the shadows. Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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