JACKSONVILLE, FLA – It has been 17 years since the city of Jacksonville had a professional team in the ECHL. The odds are that there are not many people, especially in Jacksonville, who remember much about the ECHL. They may have a lot of memories about the Lizard Kings – the name of that ECHL team – but not about the league.
So, as a public service, here are some of the differences between the ECHL of 2000 and the ECHL of today:
It’s all in a name…
Let’s get the big one out of the way right now. As of 2003, ECHL no longer stands for East Coast Hockey League. ECHL now stands for, well, just ECHL. When the ECHL aligned itself with the WCHL (West Coast Hockey League – more on that in a bit), the league elected not to redo the name entirely but to just go by the initials. You may still see an occasional article or statement asking why a league called the East Coast Hockey League has teams in the mountain time zone but the simple fact is that is not the case.
League size…
The ECHL of 2000 ended its season with 28 teams. The ECHL of 2017 will start with only 27 teams with one franchise (Portland, Maine) set to become the league’s 28th team in 2018-19.
The 2000 ECHL went as far west as the Mississippi River with teams in Louisiana (Louisiana IceGators and Baton Rouge Kingfish) as well as a squad in Little Rock, Arkansas (Arkansas Riverblades).
The ECHL of 2017 has roughly the same amount of teams but the league’s “footprint” (geographical mapping) is much more spread out. The league goes as far west as Boise, Idaho (Idaho Steelheads) and West Valley City, Utah (Utah Grizzlies). Neither team will make the trek to Jacksonville this season nor will the Icemen follow the advice of Horace Greeley and “go west, young man.”
Who was that masked man?
As mentioned before, after the 2003 season, the seven members of the West Coast Hockey League (Anchorage, AK; Bakersfield, CA; Fresno, CA; Boise, ID; Las Vegas, NV; Long Beach, CA and San Diego, CA) applied for membership in the ECHL. They played a schedule mainly against each other with occasional trips east and a trip now and then prior to the league’s playoff semi-finals and finals.
Of the seven WCHL teams, only Idaho is still a member of the league.
Who was that masked man, part 2?
Just before the start of the ECHL’s 27th season in 2014, the league agreed to a merger with the remaining seven teams in the Central Hockey League. The seven teams – Allen, TX; Brampton, ON; Independence (now Kansas City), MO; Quad City, IL/IA; Rapid City, SD; Tulsa, OK and Wichita, KS – filled the gap between the teams in the east and the old WCHL teams.
The Allen Americans, who had won the final two CHL championships, immediately made their presence known by winning the ECHL’s Kelly Cup in 2014-15 and 2015-16, the franchise’s first two seasons in the league.
Awards
The trophies awarded to the different conference and league champions remain the same.
The regular season champion is still awarded the Brabham Cup. The eastern conference champ gets the Gingher Trophy and the playoff winner receives the holy grail of the ECHL, the Kelly Cup.
Next time, we will look at who Jacksonville will face during its first season back in the ECHL.
Contact the author at Kenneth.holdren@prohockeynews.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.