ROME, NY – Rome Frenzy owner and general manager Brian Hall knew that the team’s first year would be a difficult one. He and the Frenzy held out as long as they could but a myriad of issues finally caught up with them.
As a result, the Frenzy ended their inaugural FHL season last weekend, setting off another change in the league schedule and playoffs that are expected to be announced within the next few days.
The moving of the Barons from Binghamton to Cape Cod paired with Rome shutting down left the FHL with an unintentional geographical division: the Akwesasne Warriors and the Thousand Island Privateers in the north and the Barons,
Brian (center left) and Sam Hall watch the Frenzy%27s final game (PHN photo by Wendy Hull)
The Warriors and Privateers will end their regular season on February 20th and begin the north finals on February 24th. The best-of-five series will end around March 4th or 5th. The teams in the south will finish the season on March 2nd due to the teams wanting to honor home game commitments. The top two teams – most likely New York and Danbury based on winning percentage – will start the south finals (also a best-of-five) soon after. The league championship will begin around the middle of March.
“It will be meaningful. It will be legitimate but it’s an unusual format because of unusual circumstances,” FHL Vice-Commissioner Andy “Sarge” Richards said. “We will end the season with six teams. We started with six. Nobody else has done that in the northeast corridor.”
As for the Frenzy, who plan on returning next season, when they finished their game in Danbury on February 5th, they had played 46 games, accumulating a record of 11-28-7. Had they completed the redone schedule after the Barons’ move, it would have had them playing 60 games. Richards said that under the truncated season plan, the other five FHL teams will play between 45 and 52 games. Since Rome had already achieved 46 games played and did not have a realistic shot at gaining ground in the winning percentage race up north, the rest of the teams agreed that Rome’s shutdown made sense.
“We’re all going to be kind of at the same mark if we (the Frenzy) shut the season down where we did. That was what we were really trying to do – keep some sanity in the schedule and rebalance it so you didn’t have one team going into their 60th game playing another team that was only playing its 44th game and only their second game in two weeks whereas we we‘d be coming off of our seventh game in ten days on top of all the travel,” Brian Hall said. “From a safety point of view for the players, there’s a lot of risk when you do that sort of thing.”
Richards said that the regionalizing of the remaining schedule was important to the rest of the teams.
“The main concern is to protect the (other FHL) members and to use as many of the home dates as they each have because it is important that they don’t lose income opportunities,” he said. “By the time it’s over (updating the schedule), everybody will have (played) within a few games of each other the amount of game the Rome team has already played.”
Ever since December when the Barons closed their doors and moved away from Binghamton, the FHL has been battling to get every team to the original mark of 60 games. The lag time in finding a place for the Barons to move to created a huge hole in the original schedule. By the time Cape Cod was chosen as the relocation site, the resulting reconstituted schedule was a burden to all of the teams, especially the Frenzy.
With the Barons landing on the Cape, travel expenses and time for everyone else increased significantly. According to FHL sources, most teams do not receive any income for road games that averaged close to $2,000 for the visiting team. Scheduling also became a thorny subject. Akwesasne and Thousand Islands, for example, were supposed to play each other 18 times within a four-week span, creating a tough situation for the teams who had to deal with fans who were bored seeing the same opposition so often.
The extra costs became a problem for the Frenzy who were fighting low home attendance and revenue streams. They were asked to help the league by picking up some of the Barons’ games – many against New York on the road meaning 780 miles of travel and overnight stays – but without subsidies from the other teams (as had been provided to the Barons), the franchise struggled to keep its collective head above water.
Hall said that even if the Frenzy were in the hunt for the playoffs, he would have had to pull the plug.
“We may have tried to strike a balance at first (if we had made the playoffs),” he said. “I’m not really sure there was another viable option on the table.”
The end of the Frenzy’s season came on February 5th in Danbury. It was announced during the game that the contest would be the last Rome trip to the Danbury Ice Arena and the Whalers fans applauded the Frenzy players and ownership for their efforts. The Frenzy gave it their all but fell to Danbury 6-3.
The next day, the league held a two round draft where the rights of ten of the 17 Rome players were offered to the other teams. The league felt it was necessary to hold the draft in order to help the remaining teams through injury and call-up depletions as they head into the playoffs. One player, Tibor Varga, was called up by the Bakersfield Condors of the ECHL. Thousand Islands picked up Mike Maier and Richard Scarsella. Akwesasne took Jeffrey Armando and then promptly traded him to Danbury for future considerations. Cape Cod grabbed Jose Vasquez and Leland Fidler. Danbury and New York chose not to draft anyone.
Back in Rome, Brian Hall and his father Sam have been reimbursing corporate sponsors and season ticket holders for the five home games that will not be played.
“I think the Halls are first class people,” the FHL’s Richards said. “They’re going to do the right thing.”
Making sure that no one leaves unhappy is just part of the reason why both the league office and Brian Hall are confident that the league and the Frenzy will be back next year and for years to come.
“”I think they’re (the Halls) going to take those lessons learned and apply them. I think they’ll be better off next year,” Richards said. “The goal is to be even after the second year. I think that they (FHL teams) can do that.”
Hall agreed that this first season has been a learning experience and that he and the rest of the teams will use the education well.
“There was definitely a very steep learning curve this year for a lot of the organizations and for everybody involved in the league,” he said. “There are a lot of things that were done before we even hit the ice that won’t be repeated to make sure the playing field is level.”
According to league officials, fans can expect to see expansion announcement beginning as early as this coming weekend. The FHL is anticipating a total of 8-12 teams (including the current six) to be on the ice in November. The expansion should help to reduce travel expenditures for everyone.
Hall acknowledged that the fans in Rome were probably disappointed that the team’s final game came on the road. He said that because of the way the schedule fell, the choice of the February 5th game was best because it allowed the Frenzy to “leave the season honorably” by meeting obligations agreed to at the start of the season.
He went on to thank the fans, boosters and staff for making the Frenzy a success, especially when it came to making the players feel welcome.
“We have a very, very committed and solid, albeit small, fan base that was very dedicated and were some of the top fans in the league. We had a very dedicated game day staff. We had a lot of people who put in a lot of time and a lot of effort to try to help us out to succeed. They wanted us to succeed,” Hall said. “As far as I’m concerned, we made it through the first season so we did succeed.”
One of those people who Hall was talking about is Bill Fleet. As former project coordinator for the City of Rome, Fleet, who has 37 years of coaching experience at area high schools and Hamilton College, was the main force behind renovations at the J.F. Kennedy Arena where the Frenzy played (the rink inside the arena bears his name). Despite acknowledging a disappointment that the team did not get more support in its inaugural season, he had nothing but positive words for the organization.
“I appreciated the effort they (Brian and Sam Hall) put forth. I appreciated the effort the coaches and the team put forth. They put a very entertaining product on the ice,” he said. “I’ll give credit to the players. These guys went out and battled every game. Years ago when they had some of the pro hockey teams in Utica after the Devils left, they’d be a little short-handed and they didn’t work like these guys did. These guys worked. There were days you’d see them and they’d be playing four games in five or six days, coming back off a Saturday night road trip and (they’d be) coming out Sunday afternoon and still playing hard.”
Hall said that fans are encouraged to send comments to the team or favorite players through the team.
Contact the author at wendy.hull@prohockeynews.com
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