MORRISVILLE, VT – In late June, it looked like professional hockey in the form of the Federal Hockey League’s Green Mountain Rock Crushers was over before it had begun. It is however the New England region and just like the weather, one just has to wait a little bit and things can change.
Late in July, the Rock Crushers franchise came back to life with a new owner and a new Vermont home. In October, the community of Morrisville will make history by hosting the state’s first professional hockey team at the Green Mountain Arena 35 miles south of Jay where the franchise was originally slated to play.
The switch to the new location and venue brought with it a change in ownership in a big way – the rink owner and the majority owner of the franchise are now one. GMA owner Randall Latona will serve as the chief executive
The Green Mountain Arena will be home to the Rock Crushers come October (PHN photo by Wendy Hull)
Latona, who lives in Andover, Massachusetts, owns multiple aviation businesses including Inflight Medical Services International which provides medical transport services. According to Inflight’s company website, it refers to itself as the “preferred air ambulance of the 2011 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins.”
He comes into his role as majority owner of the Rock Crushers with some past experience. He held a 20 percent minority stake in the AHL Rochester Americans from 2006 up until May 2008 when the team was purchased by Canadian businessman Curt Styres. During Latona’s involvement, he served as Alternate Governor and Vice President of Sports Operations. He was also owner of the Rochester Knighthawks, a professional lacrosse team.
During the summer of 2009, Latona purchased the Lamoille Area Recreation Center in Morrisville and renamed it the Green Mountain Arena. The community rink sits on 30 acres and hosts outdoor recreation activities such as soccer along with activities inside the rink.
The FHL’s interest in the Morrisville market dates back to last season. Just before Thanksgiving, the Broome County Barons and Thousand Islands Privateers played an exhibition game at the GMA in an effort to gauge interest from local fans. A near capacity crowd was on hand to watch the contest, proving to league officials that they should put a team there full time.
Soon after that game in Morrisville, the Barons folded up their operation in Binghamton. The FHL set out to find a new owner and location for the franchise and Latona was offered the Barons. Unfortunately,
Binghamton%27s Kira Hurley in net during the FHL exhibition game in Morrisville (PHN phptp by Wendy Hull)
“They (Latona Sports Management Group) showed a lot of interest in doing a team or taking one of our teams last year,” FHL Commissioner Don Kirnan said.
Arena manager Kirk explained that the problem was that most of the times the hockey team would want were already booked.
“At the time, it was not going to work out for the time frame that the league needed in terms of fitting up the arena and scheduling. The season had already started and we didn’t want to rush it,” he said. “We wanted to make sure all our I’s were dotted and our T’s were crossed before we undertook something of this magnitude.”
Makal, who had been the general manager of the Barons in Binghamton, did not follow the team to Cape Cod. Instead, he set out at the behest of Don Kirnan to research potential locations for a Vermont-based team to begin play during the 2011-2012 season. Makal settled on Jay – in particular the Jay’s Peak resort – and the Rock Crushers were announced as the first expansion franchise. Makal was a part of the ownership group that would operate out of the newly built Ice Haus at the resort.
Planning for the team’s historic inaugural season was well under way until late May when the resort lowered the Rock Crushers’ status in regards to ice time bookings. Management at the Ice Haus made a decision to schedule more weekend multi-team tournaments, reducing the available coveted weekend slots to far less than the number needed by the pro team.
“We couldn’t come to an agreement with the arena,” Makal said. “The arena felt they could do minor hockey tournaments for ninety percent of their weekends.”
After a conference call with the rink manager and the resort, Kirnan decided to pull the plug on Jay Peak since the commitment level required to host an FHL team was not satisfied. The Rock Crushers were left scrambling to find a new home and new majority ownership just weeks prior to the deadline for finalizing the 2011-2012 schedule.
A suspension of operations was never officially announced by the league. At the conclusion of the league’s summer meetings in late June, the FHL announced eight teams would be hitting the ice in October with no mention of Green Mountain. Behind the scenes, the Rock Crushers and the league were working hard to keep the team viable for the upcoming season. As it turned out, Kirnan had been talking to Latona since early June and by July everything was in place to get a deal done.
“We moved forward with Andy (Makal) and his team and decided that this would be a good fit,” Kirk said.
One factor that played into Latona’s decision to take on the Rock Crushers was that at the same time he was considering the purchase, a large chunk of ice time opened up at the GMA. The opening came about when the North American Hockey Academy, an elite girls hockey program, left the GMA. (In an ironic twist, the NAHA left Morrisville to go to Jays Peak and the Ice Haus.)
The lone concern the FHL had about the Green Mountain Arena was the amount of available seating. Latona immediately began renovations that include adding more bleacher space to bring the seating capacity to over 600 from its current 300-350. By the time all of the renovations are done, the Rock Crushers will have two full locker rooms with personal lockers and additional equipment storage space at their disposal. Latona assured everyone that the work will be completed in time for the start of the regular season.
For Kirk, who has been involved with the arena for almost five years, the opportunity to have professional hockey in Morrisville is something he believes the community and the region will embrace.
“It’s a tight-knit community around here. It breeds a lot of fans, especially for a team like this which is going to be the first professional hockey team in the state of Vermont,” Kirk said. “There’s that camaraderie among the towns surrounding our area so I think they’ll jump right on board and really embrace the team as their own.”
In Kirk’s view, the historical significance of hosting the first professional hockey team will help cement the bond between the fans and the team even further.
“Being a local from Morrisville and Vermont, it’s pretty exciting. I’m very excited about the opportunity and very pleased that we are able to do that for the community,” he said.
As excited as Kirk and the Rock Crushers’ staff is about the prospects of playing in Morrisville, Commissioner Kirnan and the league office may be even more hopeful about the future of pro hockey in Vermont.
“If it’s anything like that night that we played that exhibition game, I think we’ll do pretty well up there,” Kirnan said.
As for Andy Makal, his sights are set well beyond simply putting a competitive team on the ice and bringing single-A professional hockey to Vermont. He plans on using the rest of the pre-season to build a roster aimed at bringing Vermont its historic first professional championship.
He’ll get a pretty good idea of how well he has done when the Rock Crushers host the defending FHL champion Akwesasne Warriors in their home opener.
“We’re building to win a championship,” he said. “We’re building to knock Akwesasne off.”
It might be a tall task but given what the franchise has already been through, anything is possible.
Contact the author at wendy.hull@prohockeynews.com
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